On the Connecticut

Another iron in the fire

2010-06-28T22:11:00.003-04:00

My client workload is heavy and I'm working on a new project, so my blog is on hiatus. I'll let you know what the new project is all about when it's ready.
Thanks for checking.
Karl

Fear of Education?

2010-05-07T10:31:00.005-04:00

We believe in public education in the United States, so we support it with our tax dollars.

In spite of that commitment, we seem afraid to let our young people learn too much. We teach them to read but not be literate. We sanitize history. We censor literature. We restrict science education. We seem intent on stifling our children’s’ curiosity and creativity, rather than encouraging it.

We give lip service to preparing them to reach their potential, but we end up preparing them only for corporate drudgery and consumerism. Instead of teaching them to self-manage, we train them to be managed by others.

Educating young people for a rapidly changing world can no longer be a one-size-fits-all training program based on today’s reality. Technology and globalization are creating a very different world in which our youth will compete.

To be truly prepared, they must have an understanding of the economic, political and social forces that shape the world. They must be aware of the media that shape their consciousness. They must be inquisitive and think for themselves. They must be able to recognize change and then adapt to it.

To solve global problems, our youth must be able to visualize beyond the confines of their own experience. They must have the knowledge and confidence to challenge the ruling elite, ideological extremists and xenophobic nationalists. They must truly understand history to avoid repeating it.

Critical thinking is not learned from a standardized curriculum. It requires curricula that address what it means to be critical citizens and teaches the skills to participate in sustainable democracy. Our young people will need the tools for civic engagement and self-management if we want them to remain free.

Helping our youth become critically engaged citizens is the goal of public education in a democracy.

Dear Senator Gregg,

2010-05-02T01:26:00.006-04:00

I'm disappointed but not surprised by your vote against moving forward on Wall Street reform. Your past statements and actions leave little doubt that your loyalties lie with Wall Street over New Hampshire streets.

You don't need New Hampshire voters any more. You have nothing more to gain from us. You're now more concerned with nailing down the cushy lobbyist position that most certainly awaits you upon your upcoming retirement.

Why not spend your last year as a New Hampshire senator repaying your debt to the people who elected you? It would be the right thing to do for those who really helped get you where you are.

I'm proud to be from New Hampshire. I'm ashamed you're our senator.

Choices

2010-05-02T01:23:00.002-04:00

As citizens of a democracy, we have choices.

We can remain ignorant and trust our government to protect us from political and corporate profiteers, swindlers, hucksters and liars; or we can inform ourselves about the issues and get involved in making changes.

We can allow the military/industrial complex to grow rich by selling us weapons of mass destruction that allow extremist politicians to further their imperialist ambitions; or we can insist that money be spent making a more peaceful, stable world for our children and grandchildren.

We can allow our schools to be starved by corporate warmongers, our media to be controlled by corporate interests, and our elections to be manipulated by corporate lobbyists; or we can take back control of our country.

Informed choices in a democracy are vital for its survival.

Applesauce

2010-05-02T01:18:00.006-04:00

During the summer between my junior and senior years in college, I had a job working for a Hollis native. Peter Bell had a six-yard dump truck and a 20-foot box truck that he contracted out to local businesses. Both were fairly new, and Peter kept them in good working order. I was proud to drive trucks that were better than many other truckers with whom I worked.

Peter had a twinkle in his eye and a contagious smile. He was an unmerciful tease but a good boss. Since he was often gone when I arrived at his house in the morning, Peter gave me instructions for the following day in a phone call each evening.

I might have to go to a job site in the dump truck or to one of the apple storage facilities in the area with the box truck. I liked the variety and the fact that Peter trusted me to work without supervision.

Driving the dump truck usually meant hauling gravel, sand or some other aggregate from a local quarry to a work site over and over again. There were often several other truckers working the same job. As a large loader or power shovel loaded one truck, the rest would wait in line for their turn.

At one pit, the shovel operator expected each driver to watch his rear view mirror for a hand signal that the truck was full. You had to watch closely because the signal was a just quick lift of his hand from the control levers. If you missed it, you’d be reminded by a bump from the huge shovel bucket against the back of your truck. It only happened once, after which I remembered to be alert.

Then, I’d pull up to the scales if the material was sold by weight or drive directly to the work site if it was sold by the yard. After dumping the load at the work site, I’d retrace my route back to the pit. This would be repeated for the duration of the job.

Driving the box truck was much more interesting and varied. Peter had contracts with several apple packing and storage facilities in nearby Ayer, Massachusetts. Back then, apples were shipped and stored in one-bushel crates rather than today’s large bulk bins. The season started with delivering empty apple crates from the packing plants to various orchards in central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.

At the packing plant, I loaded up the truck with about 600 crates and got instructions on where to deliver them. I could manage four or five trips a day depending on the distance to the orchard. Deliveries often took me on scenic back roads to beautiful hilltop orchards. I enjoyed the work.

Once the apples began to ripen, I drove to the orchards to pick up the fruit. Loading the truck with bushel crates of apples was hard work. The apples were rolled into the back of the truck on roller runs where I had to quickly stack the heavy crates to keep up. I had to lift, turn and stack crate after crate until the truck was loaded with 350 to 400 bushels of apples. Then I drove the truck back to the packing plant where I unloaded.

As the season heightened, the truck traffic at the packing plants increased. I often had to wait for two or three trucks to unload before a space at the loading dock opened up. Most of the drivers helped each other unload to keep things moving.

I remember one driver in particular—a large one-armed man who drove an ancient Brockway flatbed truck. I don’t know how he lost his right arm, but he could unload and stack full apple crates almost as fast with one arm as I could with two. He could also drive, shift and double-clutch that old truck with his left arm as well. I don’t remember his name, but he was friendly to this skinny college kid.

One afternoon in September, I drove up to an orchard in Ashby, Massachusetts to pick up a load of Macintosh apples slated for gas storage. The farmer was particularly proud of his fruit and cautioned me to handle them with care. I drove his precious cargo back to Ayer and got in the queue to unload. Several trucks pulled in behind me until there was a long line.

At this storage facility, I had to stack the crates on pallets—36 bushels per pallet. A forklift took the pallets out of the back of the truck and carried them into the storage cellar.

I finished loading the last pallet and walked to the cab of my truck to be ready to pull away from the dock. When I felt the weight lift off the truck, I put the truck in gear and pulled away. At that moment, the forklift operator decided to set the pallet back down to straighten it on the forks. The pallet fell between the truck and the loading dock spilling all thirty-six bushels of apples. The apples rolled out into the street and down the hill to the main street.

It was about five o’clock in the afternoon and the commuter traffic was heavy. In minutes, there was a huge puddle of applesauce in the street. I was extremely embarrassed as I picked up the broken apple crates.

When I got back to Peter’s house, he had already heard about my blunder. His insurance covered the loss, but I suffered much good-natured teasing by Peter and the workers at that storage facility. Every time I went there, I could count on being asked if I had applesauce on board.

WTF?

2010-04-12T10:59:00.006-04:00

What is wrong with us? Have we become so brainwashed and jaded that we can’t see what’s happening? Our young people are being turned into murderers and war fodder by our feckless and imperialistic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And all we do is watch.

There is a video running viral on the web of a US Army helicopter gunning down 12-15 civilians in a Baghdad suburb in 2007. The grim video leaves no doubt that this was an unprovoked attack on civilians by young men caught up in bloodlust, and the Army’s response leaves no doubt it was deliberately covered up. Watch it and decide for yourself.

One of our primary military contractors, Blackwater (now euphemistically and nonsensically named Xe), murdered 17 Iraqi civilians caught in a traffic jam. Even with first-hand accounts by witnesses saying it was completely unprovoked, the murderers walked away.

Afghan investigators claim that US military forces covered up the massacre of five Afghan citizens following a raid on what turned out to be a baby shower. After first claiming US soldiers had stumbled upon the victims of some kind of an honor killing, military officials now admit that our soldiers were responsible. The Afghan investigators charge that American forces dug the incriminating bullets out of the women’s bodies to cover up the crime.

These are only a few of the hundreds of attacks by mistake or malice on the part of our soldiers, contractors and allies. This is how our Afghanistan commander, Stanley McCrystal, recently explained it:

“We really ask a lot of our young service people out on the checkpoints because there's danger, they're asked to make very rapid decisions in often very unclear situations. However, to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I've been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it. That doesn't mean I'm criticizing the people who are executing. I'm just giving you perspective. We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force.”

While we can’t let war crimes go unpunished, there is another side to this issue. What turns normal, well-adjusted young Americans into ruthless, cold-blooded murderers? What are we doing to our young people? Who bears the responsibility?

These wars have become an integral part of our culture, but we have no real sense of the extraordinary damage that is being done to the young men and women fighting in our name. Sure, we see a few of the success stories of those who have recovered from horrific injuries and started a new life with amazing prosthetic limbs, but there are tens of thousands more who have been crippled for life. And the suffering extends to their families whose lives are also permanently impacted.

The insidiousness of these wars is that the damage to the soldiers and their loved ones is profound, while the impact on the rest of us is minimal. And the military is deliberately hiding the carnage from us to keep from losing public support.

It is shameful, dishonorable and simply wrong to destroy the lives of our young people and then sweep them under the rug. We’re sending our solders on an imperialist fool’s mission into hell, turning them into murderers and war criminals, and then dumping them on the street.

It’s time to face the fact that we’re not winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis and Afghans, but we can’t lay all the blame on the soldiers. Those who made the misguided and inept decisions that sent them there are also to blame.

The politicians, the military and the media tell us how we’re doing the right thing and we’re winning. That’s nothing more than self-serving propaganda.

There is no victory in Iraq or Afghanistan. All we have done is spill the blood of more than a million civilians and brought shame and disgrace to the United States. The atrocities of these wars have stained us and will curse our children and grandchildren.

We have killed nearly 5000 American solders and wounded tens of thousands more. And these are not quickly healed wounds. They include post-traumatic stress disorders, massive head injuries and severed limbs. We have destroyed families with repeated deployments.

In the process, we have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars that could have helped the country through this recession. We could have rebuilt crumbling bridges and highways, rejuvenated our failing schools and sent millions of young Americans to college.

But we didn’t. Instead, we burned through all that money and all those human lives to act out the imperialist fantasies of a small group of political fanatics and greedy mercenaries. And every American who doesn’t now stand up to a government run amok shares the blame.

As long as we continue to let this happen, the blood of these soldiers and civilians is on our hands too. As long as we continue to rationalize this war and these deaths, a little piece of us dies too. As long as we close our eyes to the immorality of this war, we extend it.

We can no longer lay the blame on soldiers, generals and politicians. We're now accomplices in their crimes.

It's time for you and I to stop this war.

Keith Hoffman—Watercolor Landscapes

2010-04-12T00:18:00.008-04:00

Keith Hoffman recently relocated to Landenberg, Pennsylvania; but since his studio and gallery were in Jamaica, Vermont for many years, he’s still a New England artist to me.

I came across Keith at an outdoor art show in Vermont about fifteen years ago. I was so taken by his work that I visited his Jamaica studio a few weeks later and bought one of his paintings.

Keith excels at watercolors. His style is reminiscent of the mid-Twentieth Century greats, Ted Kautsky and Herb Olsen. Many artists consider watercolor the most demanding medium because it requires confidence and practice, and the ability to make corrections is limited.

Keith grew up in the New York City area in a family that included several commercial artists and illustrators who encouraged his interest in art. As a young artist, Keith taught painting classes. He did demonstrations for art organizations and university/high school art programs. He joined the prestigious Salmagundi Club and become the President of Long Island's largest art organization, the Art League of Nassau County.

Keith later relocated to Vermont to immerse himself in the rural subject matter that continues to be his passion. While in Vermont, he developed a reputation as one of the State’s finest watercolorists. He had numerous one-man exhibitions at the prestigious Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester.

Keith’s move to the Brandywine Valley area of Pennsylvania puts him in a region that has inspired artists like Howard Pyle and the Wyeths. He plans to open an arts center in Landenberg, where he renovated the upper floor of a horse barn into a studio.

He also works as an instructor at the Center for the Creative Arts in Yorklyn, Delaware and the Academy of Lifelong Learning in Wilmington. His work can be seen at galleries throughout the eastern seaboard.

You can see Keith’s work at his website: www.khoffmanart.com/index.html. You can reach him by phone at 610-274-8123 or by email at kbhoffman@verizon.net.

Granny D vs. Judd Gregg

2010-04-10T01:36:00.005-04:00

Doris "Granny D" Haddock died last month at age 100. She was a true New Hampshire hero.

She began her political career in 1960 when she and her husband successfully campaigned against an ill-conceived plan to create a harbor in Alaska by exploding nuclear devices. It was part of Operation Plowshare, a frighteningly naïve project to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosives. “Father of the Hydrogen Bomb” Edward Teller championed the project. He touted the harbor as an important economic development for America’s newest state.

Alaska’s political leaders, newspaper editors, the state university's president and church groups all rallied in support of the massive detonation even though there was no practical use for the harbor. Opposition came from the tiny Inuit Eskimo village of Point Hope, which would have been devastated by the bizarre experiment. A few environmental scientists and a handful of conservationists including Doris and her husband, Jim Haddock, successfully created enough public pressure to force the AEC to abandon the project.

Doris became interested in campaign finance reform after the defeat of the first McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill in 1995. So starting in 1999 at the age of 89, she walked the 3,200 miles from Pasadena, California to Washington, D.C. in 14 months to draw attention to campaign finance reform. Wearing her trademark wide-brimmed straw hat, she covered about 10 miles a day through deserts, mountains and forests wearing out four pairs of sneakers in the process.

In 2004, she ran for the U.S. Senate against incumbent senator Judd Gregg. Running a campaign funded only by small donations by individual contributors, she managed to garner 34% of the vote. Her well-funded Republican rival beat her with 66%. Following the election, Doris founded the Citizen Funded Election Task Force and attended its weekly meetings.

A former Congressman and Governor, Judd Gregg has been a consistent champion of special interests. He was the leading Republican negotiator and author of the TARP program, which bailed out financial institutions. He had a multi-million dollar investment in the Bank of America at the time.

In February 2009, President Obama asked Gregg to serve as Secretary of Commerce. At first he accepted; but he withdrew when the Associated Press reported that Gregg and his family profited personally from federal earmarks steered by the senator for the redevelopment of a Pease Air Force base. He claimed his withdrawal for the Cabinet position had nothing to do with his family’s real estate dealings.

Gregg explained his investments by saying, “I've throughout my entire lifetime been involved in my family's businesses and that's just the way our family works. We support each other and our activities.”

He subsequently stepped down from the TARP Oversight Board because of a busy schedule and announced he would not seek reelection. Since that time, he has done everything he can to derail the Obama Administration. As a lame-duck Senator, the Republican Party seems to have tapped him as to be their obstructionist mouthpiece.

Gregg admitted that his role was to stir up uncertainty among Democrats, hoping to trip up health care reform. He raised the specter that the reconciliation process will shut the Senate down, and questioned whether the president can use reconciliation.

He claimed that Congress couldn’t use reconciliation to fix a bill that hasn't yet been signed into law, even though Republicans repeatedly used reconciliation to push special interest legislation through the Senate during the Bush administration.

He added that the Republican Party had a whole host of procedural hurdles that they would throw in the way of healthcare reform including arcane parliamentary procedures to force Senate Democrats to vote on controversial legislative topics completely unrelated to health care. He pledged to essentially bleed the reconciliation process to death.

Gregg is a perfect example of how the Republican Party is more interested in protecting the status quo and covering their asses than in any meaningful reforms in healthcare, banking or campaign finances.

I can’t help but wonder how much better off New Hampshire and the country would be if a champion of democracy like Granny D had beaten Judd Gregg in 2004. I’m proud to claim her as a New Hampshire hero. I’m ashamed of Judd Gregg.

Favorite Rides

2010-03-05T23:37:00.010-05:00

I’ve owned quite a few Volvos. I’ve driven at least one of almost every model over the last 45 years, and I recently had the chance to drive S60 and S40 loaner cars from my local dealer. They’re both terrific cars.

I like Volvo’s design philosophy. It puts function on the same level as form. And each new model has been a big improvement over the previous one.

Until recently, Volvos have been more stodgy than stylish, but there have been a few exceptions. The 1800 ES is still a head-turner. The 780 Bertone was a handsome car. The current S60 and S80 are as good looking as any sedans on the road today, and the C30 is a slick little sport coupe.

But favorite rides have little to do with beauty. They’re about emotion.

My hands-down favorite is my 1967 210 Duett. By today’s standards, it’s a primitive automobile. It doesn’t ride or handle nearly as well as today’s cars. It’s noisy to ride in, not particularly comfortable and has very little ventilation.

1967 210 Duett*

But it’s got heart. And it made people smile—particularly after I fitted it with oversized tires on bright orange wheels, a throaty exhaust and flowered curtains in the windows.

Like most Volvos, it was build to last. It had nearly 150,000 miles when I bought it, and I drove it for more than 150,000 more before retiring to my garage for restoration.

My second favorite was my 1984 242 Turbo coupe. Even by today’s standards, it was a performance car.

I still remember the warm spring day I got it. I signed all the papers, and the salesman handed me the keys. He asked me if I knew how everything worked. I replied I did, barely able to stifle my excitement.

As I drove out of the lot, I basked in the aroma of the tan leather upholstery. I opened the side windows and the sunroof to let out the hot air. The whine of the turbocharger was music. On the ride home, it was all I could do to keep my right foot from mashing the gas pedal into the carpet.

242 Turbo*

Once it was broken in, however, I had no hesitation. There were only a handful of production cars with better acceleration than the 242 Turbo in 1984.

The car was fast, safe and comfortable. It was also the only brand new Volvo I ever owned. I drove it for 275,000 miles before selling it. I now wish I kept it.

I never bought another new car after that. I like cars but have never cared about owning a new one.

I’d rather use the saved depreciation and interest on other things. Besides, I get real pleasure out of getting the maximum service out of a car. It’s passive recycling. And Volvos are well suited to recycling.

*Neither of these photos are my cars. The Duett belongs to an acquaintance from New Jersey and the 242 is a photo I found online. I lost the only good photos of my Duett and 242.

Common Goals

2010-03-05T22:21:00.005-05:00

One-fifth of the people in the world are non-religious. They include doctors, scientists, bankers, farmers, teachers, social workers, truck drivers, food service workers and police officers in every country of the world. They include conservative and progressive thinkers. Most of them lead good and honorable lives.

I have personally observed there are many decent and socially responsible people who never go near a church. And we all know that some of history’s greatest villains cloaked themselves in religion.

The selfish and corrupt individuals in both religious and non-religious groups are a tiny minority. Most of us share similar values and ideals. In fact, we share far more similarities than differences.

We all want happy fulfilling lives. We all want to live in peace and safety. We all want our children to prosper. We all want to feel good about ourselves. I don’t know about you, but these four things add up to 95% of what I want out of life.

The biggest single difference may be that non-believers look inward for answers and believers look outward.

Neither way is better. They're simply different paths toward the same place: to be at peace with oneself.

If we are to survive on this ever-shrinking planet, we must respect each other’s beliefs. We must set aside the 5% of things on which we disagree and work toward allowing all of us to enjoy the 95% on which we do agree.

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?

Union Shop

2010-03-02T15:28:00.011-05:00

After my unpleasant experience with the Brass Shakes, I wasn’t anxious to work in another factory. But being a married art school student, I needed a summer job that paid well.

So I applied for a job at Gregg and Sons in Nashua, New Hampshire, a cabinet manufacturing company owned by the family of our lackluster New Hampshire Senator, Judd Gregg.

I started working in the basement making up packets of screws and nails for the assembly line. Each tiny brown paper bag had to contain just the right assortment to assemble a particular cabinet. I followed a daily instruction sheet and put the stapled bags in labeled trays.

It was cool and quiet in the cellar, and I worked alone listening to a small transistor radio. The shop union rated the various packets at a different hourly rates; so if I worked fast, I could make bonus in addition to my base salary. I was doing quite well when, on my third day on the job, the personnel manager came down with my job application in hand. I figured I was in hot water for something.

“How do you like it here so far, “ he asked.

“It’s nice down here away from the hot weather,” I replied.

“It says on your application that you’re going to art school. Have you ever done any pin striping?”

“A little on trucks and cars.”

“Do you want to try some striping for us here at Gregg?"

“Sure.”

He led me upstairs to the finishing plant where he introduced me to the foreman, a muscular, square-jawed guy dressed in black chinos and a fitted black golf shirt. He had a dark tan, close-cropped gray hair and deep, gravely voice. I don’t remember his name.

“Follow me,” he growled.

As we walked back through the finishing plant, my ears were assaulted by the constant howling of a sawdust exhaust fan and the wailing screams of saws, planers and joiners on the upper floor of the building. The assembly conveyer clattered as it moved finished cabinets past a workstation where five men put on hinges and door pulls with whining pneumatic screwdrivers.

The noise level was so loud that you had to shout to communicate with anyone more than a couple of feet away. The hot summer air was thick with lacquer fumes. While it was a step up from the brass foundry, a pre-OSHA cabinet factory certainly was no picnic.

In the back corner of the production floor, a huge pile of white lacquered cabinets was stacked next to a low workbench. On the other side of the bench was an empty space.

The foreman explained how they mixed brass powder with clear lacquer to produce the striping paint and gave me a handful of dagger stripping brushes.

“Put a gold stripe around the edge of each drawer and each door,” he instructed. “Make sure the thickness of your lines stays the same.” Then he turned and walked away.

I mixed up a batch of paint to the right consistency and began striping.

This was going to be easy. I had a steady hand and worked quickly. With pin striping, smooth quick strokes are the only way to get good results.

An hour or so went by. I had already done about fifteen cabinets and was feeling pretty smug. I was going to show them how it’s done.

Suddenly I heard the foreman’s gravely voice. “Hey! What are you doing?” he barked as he hurried up to my bench.

I looked around. I couldn’t see anything wrong.

“You’re going way too fast,” he scolded. “This job is rated at four pieces an hour. If you keep this up, they’ll raise the rate so no one else can make any money. Put all of those cabinets back on the other side and then go back and make the lines a little wider. And don’t do more than six an hour. That’ll give you time and a half. Just don’t screw it up for the next guy.”

He turned and walked away.

I began transferring the finished cabinets back to the unfinished pile. I could feel the stares of the guys in the nearby hardware workstation.

This was my first taste of union protocol. Here I thought I was making a good impression, and I was already rocking the boat.

Just then, the break buzzer sounded. Workers from the paint shop streamed by on their way to the break room. I joined the hardware crew and as they followed.

“Don’t let him bother you,” one of them explained. “He’s just looking out for us.”

In the break room, I noticed that many of the paint shop guys had hacking coughs and were continually blowing their noses into the paper napkins. Most of them didn’t wear their particle masks during the hot summer weather. Those masks afforded little protection against chemical fumes anyway.

There was a record heat spell a few days later. The temperature in the plant was almost unbearable. After some of the workers opened the windows, a guy from the front office came around and closed them. He said the open windows let in dust and the clerestory roof with its fans was designed to keep the building cool.

This sparked a sit-down strike. I kept working at first, but one of the hardware guys warned me not to be scab. Tempers were as hot as the afternoon sun. So I cleaned my brushes, covered my paint and sat down on my bench.

The foreman and the front office guy came walking through, waving their arms as they shouted at each other. They reminded me of two baseball managers after a bad call.

A few minutes later it was over. We were sent home an hour early due to the heat.

So, I spent the summer working half of the time and looking busy half of the time; and I was getting paid time and a half. When I got bored and management wasn’t around, I worked in the hardware station helping those guys make bonus.

I left for art school in Boston just after Labor Day, even more determined never to work in a place where human welfare is less important than company profits.

Craig Pursley

2010-03-02T14:55:00.006-05:00

Craig Pursley began drawing as a child. His ability grew with him, and Craig was already doing freelance artwork in high school. At the age of 17, he was chosen Nebraska's Outstanding Young Artist.

He graduated from Colorado State University and began teaching art at the middle school level. He also exhibited in art shows and worked as a police sketch artist.

Big Eddy

Craig moved to Southern California in 1983, where he began working for the Orange County Register newspaper as an illustrator, a job he held for 23 years. During that time, he specialized in portraits of sports, political and entertainment figures for the paper. His series of “Dreamscape” illustrations were the most successful in the paper's history.

Craig’s continuing freelance work included illustrations for the California Angels, Topps and Upper Deck Baseball Cards.

In 2002, Craig and his wife, Julie, moved to New Hampshire. Now he divides his time between here and California and enjoys painting in both states.

Copper Teapot

Craig exhibits in numerous art shows and has won many Best of Show and First Place awards. He had two one-man shows in 2008—one at Villas & Verandas Gallery in San Juan Capistrano CA and the other at The Banks Gallery in New London NH.

While his portraits and still-lifes are superb, it’s Craig’s landscapes that really resonate with me. His drawing is superb and his painting masterful. Craig’s eye for lighting and atmosphere rival some of 20th Century America's best impressionist painters.

Making Hay

Take a look at Craig’s work on his website at pursleyart.com. If you’re up this way, visit his gallery—the American Heritage Gallery of Art in Bath NH. Craig’s work is shown in other galleries as well. Contact him at 603-747-3050 or craigpursley@roadrunner.com for pricing, availability and a list of other galleries.

Windsor

Girl with the Sapphire Necklace

Drone Syndrome – Part 2

2010-02-28T02:55:00.007-05:00

The new arms race has already gathered momentum. Thirty to forty other countries around the world have begun to build, buy and deploy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs),

They’re showing up at international weapons expos and air shows. Countries ranging from Iran to China to Israel are showing off their new UAVs. The fact that Lebanon's Hizbullah is already using unmanned spy planes armed with cameras to spy on Israel means they're already in the hands of at least one extremist group prone to terrorist attacks.

We’re in for a rude shock if we if we think we’re the only ones with the ability to use armed UAVs to attack another country. Remember ten years ago when we couldn’t even imagine terrorists using commercial aircraft as weapons against us?

This new technology presents a real threat to the United States and its allies. The future holds a world in which foreign robotics will equal or even surpass our own—a world where terrorist organizations can purchase UAVs capable of delivering deadly explosives into the countries of their enemies.

Most of this technology is commercially available right now. It’s only a matter of time before UAVs fall into the wrong hands, giving even small regional terrorist groups the capability to wage war without casualties. All it will take is money.

This is the beginning of the biggest change in military strategy and capability since the invention of the airplane. That technology was available to our enemies within ten years after the Wright Brothers flight at Kitty Hawk. With today’s communication and computer technology, sophisticated UAV technology will be available to our enemies in less than half that time.

They may not have the satellite or supercomputer capability to control their UAVs from the other side of the world, but they don’t need it. The technology that agri-business uses for unmanned crop dusting is commercially available. These same drones could be easily and inexpensively converted to carry explosive warheads or disperse chemical or biological weapons.

Those of us old enough to remember the need for air defense strategies in the mid-twentieth Century, may live to see that need reborn. The proliferation of this relatively inexpensive yet extremely deadly technology harks the birth of still another arms race—anti-UAV weapons.

These UAVs can be very small and made from hard-to-detect materials. They can use low heat-producing propulsion systems. They can fly at very slow speeds at very low altitudes. This will make them very hard to detect by radar and for heat seeking missiles or jet aircraft to destroy.

Given our government’s proclivity to enter into unprovoked, imperialistic wars and the resources it will take to stay ahead in this new arms race, it looks like any hope of lower taxes and a peace dividend have evaporated.

Probably for good.

Hummer R.I.P.

2010-02-28T02:39:00.004-05:00

The original H1 military HumVee was a vehicle to be reckoned with. It was big, powerful and could go almost anywhere; but it was obsolete almost as soon as it was put into production. I liked it.

When it was first made available as a commercial vehicle, every testosterone-filled guy who ever had a Tonka truck as a kid wanted one. It was a no-compromise ride.

Its price and limited production, however, put it out of reach to all but a few movie stars, professional athletes and entrepreneurs. That’s when General Motors made one of the mistakes that would lead to its downfall. They started producing the H2 and then the H3--two silly Hummer wannabees for macho wannabees.

The energy crisis handwriting was written on the wall in big bold letters when GM brought out these two poseurs. They were based on existing truck models with none of the purposeful looks or capabilities of their progenitor. They were simply badly-timed, gussied-up harlots put out there to make money for their pimps at GM.

It’s not clear whether any other company will be foolish enough to buy this bloated brand. The military no longer wants the H1. It doesn’t look like there’s a market for the ugly baby sisters. Hopefully this icon of ridiculous American gluttony will die a quiet death.

Then again, how cool would it be to drive this bad-boy Hummer concept vehicle?

A question for my elementary school teachers

2010-02-20T01:32:00.008-05:00

I’m sure you all meant well and thought you were helping when you told me:

“You’re so smart. You just need to pay attention.”
“If you stopped daydreaming, you could do anything.”
“You’ve got so much potential. You just need to try harder.”
“If you paid attention in class, you could do so well.”
“You could get all ‘A’s if you only applied yourself.”

Didn’t any of you ever stop to think how demoralizing and shaming it is to say those things over and over again to a young child?

So the biggest lesson I learned in elementary school was: “You’re smart, but you’re a defective, lazy kid who can’t be successful.”

Unlearning that has been extremely difficult for me.

Recent studies indicate that 5-8% of children today have attention difficulties, and those are only the ones who are being treated. Like me, 75% of those kids continue to have problems as adults. And the numbers are on the rise.

Other studies suggest that 45-50% of prison inmates have ADHD.

We don’t know what causes this or why it’s rising. It may be genetics, birth complications, juvenile head trauma, allergies or chemical sensitivities. It could be too much television, video games or Internet. While it’s important to learn why the numbers are so high, it’s just as important to stop undermining the self-esteem of those children who struggle with it.

If we add early intervention strategies for dealing with attention difficulties into our elementary schools, there will be fewer expensive special education plans. Fewer children left behind. And fewer high school students who end up dropping out of school.

When we learn to help rather than discourage these children, we'll produce more successful adults and fewer inmates.

That would generate a huge economic return-on-investment for a country with the largest inmate population in the world. With 7% of our citizens in prisons (two and a half million inmates) at an average of $47,085 per year, we spend $117,712,500,000 per year incarcerating them.

It would also make us a much more productive and humane society.

The Finast Lady Treatment

2010-02-09T00:42:00.004-05:00

I have a game I often play when I'm out and about. If I run into a person working in a bank, store or restaurant who looks unhappy, I make it a point to get their name from their name tag. Then I smile and use their name when I address them. Almost every one of them warms up and smiles back. When I see them again, I do the same thing.

It started about thirty-five years ago when the customer service person in the Finast grocery store where I shopped was a real sourpuss. I started using her name and smiling when I talked with her, and she began using my name and smiling back.

One time I walked up to the service desk holding a banana like a gun and demanded she give me all the money. She laughed out loud; and almost every time I saw her after that, she commented on it. My kids refer to my game as giving someone the Finast lady treatment.

It's fun making people smile. It makes them feel good and gets me better service.

Corporations are not people.

2010-02-09T00:34:00.005-05:00

Even though most of the founding fathers were liberal capitalists, they believed that corporations were not people and did not have the same rights as people. After all, they had just fought a war against King George and his greedy lapdogs.

Many of the thirteen original colonies began as commercial ventures with proprietary charters granted to English bureaucrats and businessmen. They satisfied their labor requirements with indentured laborers brought from England and later with slaves. At the onset of the Revolution, four of the colonies—Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Maryland were still privately chartered.

The founding fathers strongly believed in regulating trade. That’s precisely why the Constitution granted the Federal Government regulation of commerce. It's incorrect to conclude that this regulation of commerce only applied to tariffs between the thirteen original states or that the founders were supportive of corporations. They believed that corporate charters should be a regulated privilege not a right.

This belief was supported by the states as well. Almost all the states included language in their constitutions to regulate corporations. Most believed that the granting of a corporate charter was a privilege that carried no rights and could be revoked whenever corporate activities were not in the general interest of the state or the people.

In the early stages of the industrial revolution, corporations flourished. They gained more power and more influence. They began to fund campaigns and establish friends in high places in this country, just as they had in England. This began a one hundred and eighty year period of lawsuits and court decisions based on hair-splitting semantics that culminated in January with the current pro-corporate, activist Supreme Court’s decision to grant corporations the same rights as citizens.

Corporations are not people. They do not have the same rights, morals or ideals as individual people. They do not vote and should not participate in elections the same way people do.

This ruling will cause a flood of corporate cash into politics. If you think candidates have been bought and paid for in the past, wait until you see the upcoming election cycle.

The Supreme Court ruling that corporations can support candidates without limit means that even foreign corporations can buy as many Congressmen as they can afford by funneling money through Delaware-based subsidiaries. It puts our democracy at a very dangerous historical crossroad.

It’s critical for the American people to reestablish our control over corporations by passing an amendment to the Constitution restricting corporations. It’s what the founding fathers intended, and it’s what will keep our democracy alive.

No Child Thrown Away

2010-02-09T00:28:00.004-05:00

I was a well-behaved child in school. Except for daydreaming, I was never a behavior problem.

I stayed in my seat, didn’t say much and slid through twelve years of public school. My biggest body of work in high school was a thick loose-leaf binder full of car drawings.

My grades were mediocre. No one excited me. No one inspired me. And no one reached out to me. It felt like I didn’t matter.

Nowadays I’d be diagnosed ADD. Not hyperactive—just difficulty staying on task.

I don’t say this to blame anyone or shirk my own responsibility. It’s just what happened.

I'm now the school board chair in my community. We have about 80 kids in pre-K through eighth grade. My good friend, Tom McGuire, is the District Administrator and the best educator I've ever met. I have learned a great deal from him.

Tom believes that every child is entitled to an education that accommodates different learning styles. He believes every child wants to learn. And fair is not that every child gets the same, but that every child gets what they need to succeed.

Human diversity is inevitable and desirable. No two children learn alike. No child sets out to fail. And no child wants to be thrown away.

Because of my own experience, I want our school to help every child succeed—including those well-behaved but uninspired kids who can’t stay on task. I want our school to offer a curriculum that offers a broad spectrum of learning opportunities—where no child feels like they don’t matter.

Every child has a gift. Far too many of the difficult students fall through the cracks; and they're often the outside-the-box thinkers that our country most needs.

Surreal Conflict

2010-02-08T23:22:00.005-05:00

Here’s the surreal aspect of the conflict between religious and non-religious thinking.

The world’s most powerful organized religions—Christianity, Judaism and Islam—are based on mythical ideology that is put forward as fact.

Those who doubt these mythologies are dismissed as evil and dangerous heretics. They have historically been the target of incarceration, banishment, public execution and holy wars.

Non-believers who have science and logic on their side are continually challenged to refute these myths. They are expected to defend their non-belief in the myths of the believers.

This presents a conundrum. How do you prove that something doesn’t exist? The burden of proof would logically be on those who believe, not those who don’t.

The same enigma has led to wars between believers of disagreeing myths. Christians and Moslems have been at war for a thousand years because each side dismisses the others’ myths. Ten of thousands have died over differences in folklore.

It’s like fighting over whether the paintings of Salvador Dali are better than the paintings of Rene Magritte.

Galatea of the Spheres - Salvador Dali

La Therapeute - Rene Magritte

The Brass Shakes

2010-01-12T20:58:00.009-05:00

My first year of college didn’t go well.

I was a naïve kid from a small town in New Hampshire. I didn’t fit in with the rich prep school types. I didn’t like my alcoholic ex-Navy roommate. And I wasn’t interested in the courses. So I took a year off to figure out what to do next.

I went back to my summer job at Silver Lake State Park; but when fall came, I was out of work. I stopped for a haircut at Dick Navaroli’s barbershop in mid-September. The shop was located next to the Red & White, downstairs from Dick's apartment in the old hotel building everyone called The Block.

Dick was a nice guy and a good barber, and he loved to talk. When I walked in, Jack Boyd was sitting in the brown leather upholstered barber chair with a crisp, light-blue barber’s cloth snapped around his neck. Dick chattered away as he finished the haircut.

“What’s Mr. Karl up to today,” he asked. Dick always called me Mr. Karl.

“Looking for a job,” I replied

“What are you looking for?” Jack asked as Dick brushed the loose hairs off his neck with a powdered neck duster.

“Anything that pays well.”

Jack sized me up. I was a skinny eighteen year-old kid. “Think you can handle a tough job?”

“What kind of a job?”

Dick unsnapped the barber cloth and drew it aside. Jack stood up and looked me in the eye. “You know where Nashua Brass is?”

“Yes.”

“Be there tomorrow morning at eight. I need some help in the foundry.”

Then he paid for his haircut and left.

“That was good timing,” Dick said as I climbed into the chair.

I was there at eight sharp the next morning. Jack showed me around the old brass foundry. There was a furnace room with two big furnaces and a large molding room where a dozen men worked. It probably hadn’t changed in a hundred years, and OSHA was still eight years away.

The pay was good, so I took the job.

When I punched in the following morning , Jack introduced me to Lionel Ledoux, an avuncular French-Canadian in his early 50s who spoke with a thick accent. Lionel would be my work partner and mentor.

The daily routine was simple. For most of the day, we sat at grinding wheels in one corner of the molding room, removing the flashing from brass castings. Flashing is the extra material left by seams in the mold. It was a mindless job, interrupted every two hours when we helped with the pour-off.

Lionel and I hit it off right away. He talked constantly in his hoarse, gravely voice as we sat at adjacent grinding wheels. He was a diligent worker who had been at the company for 22 years. The high point of his week was Saturday night out at Duke’s, a bar and strip club in nearby Tyngsboro, Massachusetts.

“You come with us this week,” he said.

“I don’t have an ID.”

“Not to worry. You don’t need one with me.”

When a bell rang, we strapped on leather leg protectors that looked like something a baseball catcher might wear, a thick leather apron and heavy leather gloves with cuffs that went almost to our elbows. Then we walked to the furnace room for the pour-off.

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc that has been made by man for several thousand years. The copper and zinc are melted together, and the molten liquid is poured into a mold made by packing fine sand around a master pattern in a casting flask. The pattern is then removed leaving a cavity with a channel for pouring in the molten brass. After pouring, the brass cools and solidifies, and the sand is removed.

The melting point of copper is about 2000 degrees F. The furnace room was the closest thing to hell that I ever experienced. The heat from the furnaces was overwhelming, and the roar was deafening.

The furnace operator was a huge bald man who wore a strap undershirt under his apron. His muscled arms and shoulders were covered with sweat and grime. In the glow from the furnace, he looked like a guard at Satan’s door.

Recessed into the floor in front of the furnaces was an oven for preheating large ceramic pots to the same temperature as the molten brass. When the cover was pulled aside, you had to straddle a three-foot wide, 2000° hole in the floor, reach in with a pair of long-handled tongs and lift out a twenty-five pound pot that was wedged in among a bunch of others.

There were no guardrails. It was so hot you couldn’t breathe. And the heat dried out your eyes almost instantly. It was the most frightening task I’ve ever faced.

After lifting the pot from the oven, it was locked into a large iron clamp and a long iron bar slid though a ring in the clamp. Lionel and I then carried it by the iron bar to the furnace, where it was filled with molten brass.

The pot had to be held very steady when the big furnace tilted foward. If the hot molten spilled onto the cool concrete floor, it spattered like water in a hot frying pan. Once filled with molten, the whole thing weighted about 150 pounds.

We then carried the pot out to the molding room where the molders would pour the molten brass into their casting flasks. There were three teams of two men, and each team repeated this procedure several times during each pouring. It was a hot, dirty and dangerous job.

One morning during my second week, a molder bumped a full pot of molten against the side of his casting flask as he began to pour. Molten brass spilled to the floor and spattered everywhere. A glob of it bounced up onto my left leg between the apron and my leg protector and set my jeans on fire.

I struggled to brush it away and put out the fire with my left hand while holding my end of the iron bar in my right and without spilling any more molten. The foreman saw what was happening and rushed over. He summoned another molder to take over for me while I went to his office for first aid.

The burn was painful but not serious, and the foreman dressed my wound.

“You handled yourself pretty good out there,” he said. “Somebody could’ve really got hurt.”

After that rite of passage, I was accepted.

Several weeks later, I came down with a strange ailment. Every night, I felt like I was coming down with the flu. I was feverish, nauseous and ached all over. I went to bed early and by morning was fine. I assumed it would pass.

It didn’t. One morning after a particularly bad night, I mentioned it to Lionel.

“Oh that’s just the brass shakes,” he told me. “I still get them. You get used to it.”

I left Nashua Brass soon after. I never got a chance to take Lionel up on his invitation to Duke’s.

I’ve since learned it was metal fume fever, also known as brass founders' ague, brass shakes or zinc shakes, and is caused by exposure to fumes from zinc or magnesium oxide. The symptoms are caused by an immune reaction when the inhaled fumes injure the cells lining your airways. It also modifies proteins in your lungs. The modified proteins are then absorbed into your bloodstream, where they act as allergens. Continued exposure can lead to leukocytosis, kidney failure and death.

I often wonder how much longer Lionel lived.

Drone Syndrome

2010-01-10T21:32:00.009-05:00

Forty years ago, I worked for a military contractor. The longer I worked there, the more I came to dislike the job. When I could no longer live with myself, I quit.

In many ways, it was a great place to work. I worked with a bunch of very creative, highly motivated people. The pay was good with almost unlimited opportunity for overtime. The benefits were excellent. And job security was all but guaranteed.

The problem was that we were building weapons. When you’re building things like bomb fuzes, you lose perspective.

Bomb fuzes were the predecessors to today’s smart bombs. Screwed into the nose of a bomb, they determined when the bomb exploded, maximizing enemy deaths and infrastructure destruction.

One of the more bizarre projects was a Frisbee-like grenade that was designed to hover over the enemy in the swamps of Vietnam and direct the blast of metal shards down onto them.

We also built radar systems for anti-aircraft missiles and cannons. They were easier to rationalize since they were defensive weaponry.

Periodically, we were shown films on how our products worked, all cloaked in clinical terms of efficiency. The films included tests demonstrating the relative destruction of buildings by bombs detonated at different altitudes. Or the destruction of drone target planes by rapid-fire cannons that sounded like a giant fart as they fired 3,600 rounds per minute.

These days, drones have gone from prey to predator. They’re controlled from secret, remote sites halfway around the world by military personnel who might as well be playing video games -- except they’re not games. These men and women go to work and kill people thousands of miles away and then go home for supper.

And there lies the problem. War has become too easy.

American drones are being used in an ever-widening war in the Middle East. They give our military the ability to extend war into countries with whom there is no declaration of war. Like those bomb fuzes forty years ago, they are the predecessors of “Terminators” that will secretly carry out assassinations of suspected enemies and attacks on suspected targets.

Killer-drones have already been used in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Shrouded in secrecy, these technological predators have taken the decision to make war out of the hands of Congress and the American people. They have erased international boundaries. They allow our military to launch secret attacks 24/7/365 almost anywhere in the world against real and perceived enemies based on secret intelligence to which we’re not privy.

These enemies have often not been where the intelligence suggested, and innocent civilians have died. The use of these drones is turning us into the terrorist assassins that we so doggedly pursue—assassins with no accountability.

This is a frightening and significant development. It will most certainly initiate a rapid proliferation of new unmanned tactical weapons. Like the escalation of bomb technology born in World War II, it signals the beginning of a new arms race.

And the irony is that we’re the world’s only military super-power. The others are gone.

Our military budget already accounts for nearly half of all global military spending. Major nations like Russia and China are reducing military spending. So we’re creating an arms race with whom? For what purpose?

The only winners will be the military-industrial complex that I once worked for – the arms manufacturers, advanced weapons labs and think tanks that churn out strategies for future military domination.

It’s a one-nation race to the poor house.

Stephen Huneck

2010-01-10T12:44:00.019-05:00

A Vermont folk artist and businessman who I admired took his own life this week. The papers said he was despondent over financial difficulties and being forced to lay off most of his employees.

Joy Ride

Stephen Huneck loved art and loved dogs. He combined those passions into a body of work that many artisans never accomplish. He was a self-taught artist, print-maker, woodcarver, furniture builder, gallery owner, childrens’ book author, illustrator and entrepreneur. He built a beautiful home, studio and gallery complex called Dog Mountain in St. Johnsbury, Vermont that included a unique chapel for dogs (www.dogmt.com/chapel) and ran another gallery in Woodstock, Vermont.

The Chapel at Dog Mountain

I once met Huneck and told him I how much I liked his work. I always hoped to sometime have a chance to talk with him at length. It’s a grim reminder never to put off taking time to talk with people you admire.

I wanted to ask him how he found time to cram all the things he did into his life. How he developed his quirky sense of humor. How he came up with his ideas. How he overcame his debilitating injuries. And how he balanced his art and business.

In addition to Huneck’s artistic ability, droll humor and keen sense of design, I admired his high standards of craftsmanship. His eccentric furniture was sturdy, beautifully built and flawlessly painted. His hand-made picture fames were perfectly mitered and finished. His art prints and greeting cards were beautifully printed on high-quality paper. And the detail on the chapel was exquisite.

Lab Rocker

His work is held in both private and public collections including the Smithsonian Institution, New York's Museum of American Folk Art and the Contemporary Museum of Art in Sydney, Australia. Stephen Huneck was a guy who I thought had the world on a string.

His suicide really resonates with me. I’ve had several bouts with depressions in my life. The worst one lasted for several years after my father died. During that period, my advertising agency floundered, forcing me to lay off loyal, long-term employees. Then a friend and business partner turned out to be a pathological liar who cheated me out of thousands of dollars, caused me to lose my investment property and nearly lose my home.

It was a period during which I struggled to find any reason to continue. I was obsessed with thoughts of suicide. Thanks to some excellent books, medication, a good therapist and a supportive family, I bounced back.

Selective Hearing

I can’t help wishing I could have had that talk with him. Told him I was once where he was. That I know how hopelessly overwhelming depression can be. And let him know he could be happy again. But he probably wouldn’t have listened any more than I would have back then.

Each one of us is valuable in our own way, but it seems more tragic when a person who has given the world so much joy feels so much pain and failure.

Tiger Maple Mini Chest

Putting a good spin on 2009

2009-12-29T01:16:00.004-05:00

2009 was a disappointing year for me. Even more disappointing than the Bush years. With Bush you knew what you were getting—a pro-big business, pro-war, pro-rich, pro-crony looting of the public coffers and pillaging of the Constitution. He was liar, a thief and a charlatan. No surprises. No disappointments.

I had higher expectations for the Obama administration. The President came into office on an antiwar, anti-fat cat, pro-middle-class platform with his party in control of both the House and the Senate. Since taking over the helm from Bush’s band of pirates, the Obama Administration has expanded the war, catered to fat cats and given the middle class nothing. No real healthcare reform. No real banking reform. No Gitmo closing. No Iraq pullout. No investigation of the Bush crime wave.

I know we can’t blame it all on the White House. The fat cats still have their claws deeply dug into Congress. I just wanted to see the President act like he promised in the campaign.

As the New Year approaches, I’m trying to put a good spin on 2009. Maybe it was the transition year that the Obama team needed to ramp up for change we can believe in. Nah!

Painted Pine Man

2009-12-25T01:16:00.012-05:00

Paul Evans calls himself “The Painted Pine Man", and it’s a name that fits just right. In a small one-man Vermont shop, Paul builds reproductions of painted antique country pine furniture.

Paul handcrafts each piece using tools and techniques from the past. He hand-planes the lumber and moldings. He uses square-head cut nails and hand-forged hinges. But it’s the painted finishes that give Paul’s cupboards an authentic aged look that few furniture makers can match; and if you ask him how he gets that look, he politely changes the subject.

Hanging Corner Cupboard

Paul and his wife, Jean, have a lovely little shop on their picturesque 19th Century farm that will delight anyone with a passion for country decor. It sits on a narrow country lane called Still Run after the whiskey stills that were once located there.

The tiny building, formerly part of a sash and blind mill, was moved to the farm in the 1930s. Jean has great eye for decorating, and the shop is a perfect setting for Paul’s work. His furniture is complimented by a charming array of decorative accessories—also for sale.

The shop is located in Peacham, one of the prettiest towns in what I think is the prettiest part of Vermont—The Northeast Kingdom. Peacham is about four hours from Boston, so it’s not quite a Sunday afternoon excursion; but if you plan to be in the area, it’s well worth a visit.

Paul and Jean are friendly country folks who love visitors. The shop is open weekends Memorial Day thru October from 10:00 to 5:00 or by appointment. You can take a virtual tour on their website at www.paintedpineman.com.

Stepback Open-Shelf Cupboard

If you see something you like, give Paul a call at 802-592-3219. He can sell you something from the website or custom-build a piece of furniture to fit a particular spot in your home in a color to match your décor.

Tombstone Corner Cupboard

War Birds

2009-12-20T00:28:00.006-05:00

George Bush and his kettle of hawks must be feeling pretty smug about now. They were taking the rap for having gotten us into a no-win quagmire. Their ill-conceived invasion of the Middle East had turned into a monstrous albatross. The Chicken Hawk-in-Chief was stuck with terrible legacy.

Then along comes President Obama with this terrific speech on Afghanistan. He was eloquent, thoughtful and thorough. His speechwriters really strutted their stuff. And with that speech, he took that dead rotting bird and hung it around his own neck.

General McChrystal and his cohorts were able to sell the President on their testosterone-fueled fantasies about taming Afghanistan. Our Middle East foreign policy was hijacked by the military/industrial vultures and national security theorists who play war games with other people's lives and money.

Their foolhardy attempt to conquer Afghanistan has nothing to do with enhancing our national security. It’s an American intrusion into a civil war they don’t understand and can’t use military force to control.

This new troop deployment and its huge cost will have no impact on the insignificant number of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It won’t keep the Taliban influence from growing. And unless we’re prepared to dump billions more into the illegitimate Afghan government, it won’t make any significant contribution to rebuilding Afghanistan.

Most independent analysts believe it will take at least 10 years to turn Afghanistan's illiterate and corrupt security forces into anything resembling competency. And cost us three to four billion dollars a year to do it.

The President’s contention that Afghanistan is a "war of necessity" is false. This is a war of his choosing.

I had hoped we elected a leader who would reject the same old interventionist mindset of those who profit from permanent war. But his Afghan policy shows he’s not that leader. He's a hawk in dove's feathers.

Holiday Doors 09

2009-12-20T00:14:00.007-05:00

On the way home from shopping up in St. Johnsbury, I took pictures of some of the town's wonderful doorways decorated for the holidays. Click on the image for a closer look. Best wishes for a peaceful holiday season.
Karl

Faded Hope

2009-12-15T01:43:00.004-05:00

If you read the very first entry in this journal, you know I was very excited about the election of Barack Obama. I had high hopes that he would restore the integrity of the United States Presidency and the American people.

I’ve been through enough election cycles to know that Presidential candidates say whatever they need to say to get elected. I’m not so naïve to think Barack Obama was any different. I did, however, hope that he might lead the country in a new direction

1. I hoped he would close Guantanamo as he said he would. Maintaining this illegal facility and our other “black site” prisons makes us no better that any of the repressive regimes we claim to oppose. There is not one valid reason why these prisoners should not be given due process. We were able to bring Timothy McViegh and a whole host of other terrorists to justice using our legal system and prisons. We’re a country of blind justice, not selective justice.

2. I hoped that he would give the American people a thorough investigation of the Bush Administration’s bailout of the financial industry. We know it involved extensive corruption, mismanagement and cronyism, but there has still not been a full accounting of the $700 billion TARP spending or the $2 trillion+ in loan guarantees by the Federal Reserve.

3. I knew that Obama opposed the military invasion of Iraq and supported the invasion of Afghanistan, but I hoped he would stand up to the hawks who think military action is the solution to all international political problems. I hoped he would have the insight to see that continued military action in Afghanistan is causing more harm than good.

4. I hoped that he would get us out of Iraq. Thousands of US troops permanently remain in Iraq to protect our business and political interests. By recommitting the United States to the imperialistic nation-building policies of the Bush Administration, President Obama is continuing the legacy of saying our country is doing one thing when it’s in fact doing another.

5. I hoped he would use the bully pulpit of his office to lead the country toward meaningful healthcare and financial reform. He came into office backed by a populist mandate and a Democratic-controlled Congress, yet he has done little to discourage the upward flow of our nation’s wealth into the hands of a decreasing number of people at the top of the income scale.

What attracted me to Barack Obama was that he seemed like a political outsider who possessed the idealism and commitment to bring about change. I may have projected more of my progressive goals onto him than was realistic; but I thought he would stand up to Wall Street, the healthcare/pharma industry and the military on behalf of middle-class America.

He has turned out to be a disappointing centrist focused on pleasing the same special interests as the last four administrations. President Obama seems more dedicated to maintaining the status quo than change we can believe in. He's not leading. He is placating.

I still have hope, but it’s fading fast. My biggest hope is that I’m wrong about him.

A matter of priorities

2009-11-30T21:33:00.007-05:00

According to a recent study by the American Friends Service Committee, the United States spends $720 million dollars per day on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s $30,000,000 per hour - 24/7.

These wars have cost us more than a trillion dollars to date.

The Federal government today announced it will cost one million dollars per year per soldier to send troops to Afghanistan, and President Obama is sending an additional 30,000 soldiers to that country.

Don’t these numbers tell us something?

Our healthcare system is failing. Our childrens’ education is suffering. The polar ice caps are melting. And we’re spending $30,000,000 per hour to do what?

Round up a few thousand insurgents? Stabilize a country that has been unstable for centuries? Prove that our military doesn’t lose wars?

The President is fiddling while Rome burns.

It’s time to rethink our priorities. We need get out of Afghanistan. We must reduce our spending on war and instead focus on functioning schools, healthy communities, good jobs and stopping global warming. Instead of robbing from our grandchildren’s economic well-being, we must invest in it.

Let's spend that $300,000,000 per hour on things that will solve problems instead of creating them.

Even a small shift in our priorities would have a huge impact on our children's future.

Shop and Drop

2009-11-30T20:32:00.009-05:00

In December of 1966, I was a recent college graduate with a good job in an industrial publishing department. I had a pretty young wife, an eighteen month-old son and a two month–old daughter. This was the first Christmas that our son, Brian would be old enough to really appreciate the holidays; and since it was the first Christmas following several years of college-induced poverty, it was the first year we had any money to spend on gifts.

We went shopping at the brand new Natick Mall in nearby Natick, Massachusetts. It was the first enclosed shopping mall in the area and situated near the very first New England shopping mall, Shoppers’ World.

I was feeling proud as we walked along the crowded mall toward the exit. After four years of going without, I was dressed nicely and my arms were full of gifts. No more worn out clothes and tennis shoes. No more apologies for paltry gifts.

The style in men’s clothing at the time was slim and trim. I wore a fitted button-front shirt with a narrow necktie, black tapered-leg chinos with no belt and black pointed-toe shoes. The look was made for a skinny guy like me.

Chris walked beside me carrying Kelly Anne while Brian toddled ahead, exploring the indoor plants and benches.

When we reached the doorway, I switched the packages to my left arm and squatted down to scoop up Brian in my right arm and carry him out to the car. As I stood up, I heard a ripping sound. The seam down the back of my pants had split open, and they began to slide down my hips.

I stepped out into the frigid winter weather walking bowlegged to keep the pants from falling to my knees. The throng of shoppers entering the mall stared as I struggled toward the parking lot. I turned to my wife for help, but she was enjoying my predicament.

The pants slid down to my knees after ten or twelve steps, prompting peals of laughter from Chris. I switched from walking bowlegged to walking with my feet apart, hoping to keep the pants from falling any further. It was no use. After a few more steps the pants dropped to my ankles. With both arms full, I hobbled the rest of the way to the car.

When I reached our Volvo Duette wagon, I opened the back doors and set Brian and the packages inside. Chris caught up with us, laughing hysterically. I pulled up my pants and lifted Brian into the rear seat.

We didn’t talk much on the ride home. I was nursing my wounded pride, and Chris was giggling the whole way.

Your wallet can talk

2009-11-03T21:50:00.006-05:00

I decided to break down and buy a new mattress and box spring today. After looking around on-line to learn what to buy and where, I decided to buy a memory-foam mattress from an outfit in Poughkeepsie, New York. Their product compared favorably with the more expensive Swedish mattress, and they were offering free shipping for the next two days.

I called twice to place an order—once this morning, once this evening. Both times I was forced to navigate a voice prompt after which I was treated to several replays of a pre-recorded announcement telling me all their mattress specialists were busy helping other customers but the company valued my business. I was then sent to voice mail where I was promised a call back if I left a message. I never got a call back.

If I couldn't reach a sales person to order their product, what would happen if there was a problem with my order? I decided that I'm just not comfortable dealing with a company that can't or chooses not to hire enough sales people. I went elsewhere.

If you ever hope to get businesses to give you good service, take matters into your own hands.

The next time a business keeps you waiting on hold, sticks you with a rude or incompetent salesperson or treats you poorly, go somewhere else. I know. It’s easier to stay or wait or say nothing. You’ve got enough things on your plate without another hassle.

But by putting up with it, you’re saying it’s acceptable behavior. You’re giving them your permission to continue. Don’t do it.

Humans need regulation

2009-10-26T00:50:00.002-04:00

It’s not that we’re all evil. It’s just that we all think about our own welfare first. It’s probably instinct imprinted in our DNA.

But it’s why we have laws, social rules and governments. Why religions evolved. Why we need regulation.

So when free-marketers proclaim that businesses, corporations and investors should be completely unregulated, they’re ignoring human nature. They’re disregarding thousands of years of history. They’re either kidding themselves or lying to us.

The Godfather Speaks

2009-10-23T23:09:00.001-04:00

The Godfather of one of America’s most ruthless organized crime families, George H. W. Bush, called his son's critics names on morning TV.

He singled out MSNBC personalities Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow calling them "sick puppies."

"The way they treat my son and anyone who's opposed to their point of view is just horrible," he said. "When our son was president they just hammered him mercilessly and I think obscenely a lot of the time and now it's moved to a new president."

All I could think of is Don Corleon complaining how the newspapers treated Michael Corleon badly.

People tend to say harsh things about a man who let a city full of people drown, started an illegal and unprovoked war, condoned torturing his enemies and established secret prisons… who confined his critics to fenced off enclosures out of view and then illegally tapped their phones… and who incited fear among Americans to seize absolute power.

Does the Godfather expect that we’re going applaud his son’s illegal tactics?

Healthcare Hijack

2009-10-03T01:12:00.004-04:00

The healthcare insurance industry has a lucrative racket, and they don’t want anything messing it up. So, they’re doing everything they can to scuttle the idea of a public option.

Their lobbyists and propagandists have been working overtime to protect their interests. Make no mistake about it; they’re playing to win.

Their paid PR mules are spreading lies, calling names and making up facts -- in short using every tool in the propagandist’s tool box to thwart any government involvement in healthcare. Even though the most successful social programs like Social Security, Medicare and the Veterans Administration are government run. And even though other countries have successful government-run healthcare.

As a diversionary measure, they’ve gotten their Congressional patsy, Max Baucus, to present a self-serving counter-proposal. The Baucus Plan was carefully structured by the insurance industry to guarantee them a multi-billion dollar windfall.

Here’s how it works. The government passes a law that the 40 million uninsured Americans must purchase health insurance. The law is added to the Internal Revenue Tax Code and calls for a $1900 “excise tax” if you don’t buy insurance. In other words, the IRS comes after you if you don’t pay, and it can attach your assets and put you in jail.

Under the pretense of solving the healthcare problem, The Baucus Plan uses the IRS to blackmail 40 million Americans into buying his benefactors’ insurance. It’s no different than any other organized crime protection racket.

Who will pay the price? The working poor who can least afford it.

Unless enough Americans see through this con and raise some hell with their Senators and Representatives, this legalized extortion could become part of the US Tax Code.

Soldiers will be Soldiers

2009-09-29T23:38:00.005-04:00

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, recently said the situation there is serious and growing worse and the United States risks failure unless we send in more troops.

"Although considerable effort and sacrifice have resulted in some progress, many indicators suggest the overall effort is deteriorating. We run the risk of strategic defeat by pursuing tactical wins that cause civilian casualties or unnecessary collateral damage. The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves," he wrote.

His statement precisely illustrates why a soldier should not be making foreign policy decisions. It’s all about the military.

From what I’ve read, McChrystal is an excellent soldier. He wants to win the war. That’s his mission, and that’s the problem.

From their first day of basic training, soldiers are trained to win wars. And our soldiers are certainly among the best in the world. If you want to win a war, you want the best.

But is winning a war in Afghanistan really in our best interests?

I don’t remember that we went into Afghanistan to win a war. We went into Afghanistan to capture al-Qaeda terrorists. Now we’ve stumbled into the same quagmire of tribal warlords and religious factions that sucked the life out of the Soviet military in the 1980s.

The solution in Afghanistan is not military. We must not let a military leader decide our course of action. That decision belongs in the hands of civilian foreign policy experts -- not warriors.

La Grange Rond

2009-09-28T23:02:00.019-04:00

Photographing barns has been my passion for years. At last count I had close to 10,000 photographs of barns throughout the northeastern United States, plus some in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, California, Arizona and the Province of Quebec

Quebec has hundreds of lovely little villages, each with a well-maintained church and many with colorfully painted barns. For my first photographic expedition across the border, I planned to photograph round and multi-sided barns. I studied old books, magazines and tourist guides. I found eight near the border and made notes of their location.

Mansonville

My wife and I set off from our summer camp in northern Vermont early one summer morning. An hour later, we crossed the border at Derby Line and stopped at the visitor center for a map. A pleasant guide apologized that she had run out of provincial maps, but she was kind enough to give us a photocopy.

Using my notes, I located the towns that had round barns on the map and plotted a route that would take us to all eight.

Barnston

The first five took about six hours, including a picnic lunch overlooking beautiful Lake Massawippi. The farmers were gracious about letting me tramp around their barnyards snapping photos from various angles. I speak very little French; but most of the people in southern Quebec are bilingual and very friendly, so communication was not a problem.

The sixth barn took nearly two hours to find, but it was well worth the trip. It was part of a beautiful hilltop farm with a spectacular view. I got some great shots, but it was almost five o’clock in the afternoon by the time I was done.

West Brome

Back in the car, I looked at the map and then at my wife. “The next one is in St. Jacques la Majeur de Wolfston,” I announced in my best French accent. “It doesn’t look that far. Should we try one more before supper?”

“If you think we can make it.”

“It can’t be more than an hour and a half. Maybe two hours at the most.” I pointed to the location on the map. “It’s right here. And there’s plenty of daylight left.”

Two and a half hours later, I began to realize just how much the photocopied map had been reduced. Chris studied it closely.

“This scale of miles is pretty tiny. I think it might be farther than you think,” she said with an unmistakable hint of sarcasm.

We followed a winding secondary road. The scenery was gorgeous—miles and miles of forested wilderness, small mountains and spectacular views.

Ayers Cliff

When we finally reached St. Jacques, it was after eight o’clock and the sun was close to dropping behind the mountains. I had no idea where the barn was. There was nothing in the town but a tiny church and three houses. One of them had a small store in the front room.

I pulled up in front of the store and went inside. The two teenage girls behind the counter smiled.

“Bonjour. Could you tell me where I could find the round barn in town?”

The two girls stared at me blankly. After a long silence, I realized they couldn’t understand me.

“Parlez-vous anglais?”

They giggled and shook their heads no. Another long silence.

I couldn’t think of the word for barn. I remembered farm was ferme and round was rond.

“Rond ferme?,” I asked.

The girls looked puzzled.

"Rond ferme,” I repeated, this time slower and louder and accompanied by drawing circles in the air with my hands.

They looked at each other. It was obvious they had no idea what I was talking about. They weren’t deaf. They just didn’t understand.

I had no more than twenty or twenty-five minutes before the sun went down, and I had come too far to go home empty handed. So, I ran out to the car to get a tourist booklet with a picture of a round barn. I took it inside and showed it to the girls.

They took the booklet and walked into the back part of the house. I could hear people talking in French. There was much laughter.

The girls reappeared. The one carrying the booklet walked out onto the porch beckoning me to follow. Once outside, she pointed across the valley.

“Over there,” she said, mimicking my slow and loud delivery.

There on a hillside about a half-mile away was the barn.

She pointed to a dirt road across from the church and handed me the booklet.

“Bonjour. Merci.” I said awkwardly.

Within a few minutes, I was pulling into the driveway of the neat little farm. Luck was with me. Situated on a western slope, the barn was still in bright sunlight. It was not round but six-sided.

St. Jacques le Majeur

I knocked on the door, camera in hand. A woman appeared behind the screen door.

“Bonjour. Would you mind if I photographed your barn?”

The woman stared at me with the same blank expression. Another long silence.

I was running out of time. I pointed to my camera and then to the barn.

“Photograph?”

She nodded her head yes.

I walked out by the barn, set up my tripod and snapped a picture. I looked back at the house to find the woman and a child standing on the lawn watching me. I worked my way around the barn, taking pictures from different angles. Each time I glanced back at the house, there were more people. My wife was doing her best to be invisible as she sat in the car reading.

A pickup truck pulled into the driveway. A man and woman got out and joined the group. By the time I was halfway around the barn, a group of several adults and children were watching and chattering in French.

I finished the roll of film and walked back to the car. My audience was gone, but the woman was standing in the door watching me.

“Merci,” I said with a smile as I put my camera on the back seat and climbed into the car.

An hour and a half later, we were driving down the main drag in Sherbrooke, tired and hungry and looking for some place to eat. I wonder how many families in St. Jacques le Majeur were talking about the odd American photographer.

Understanding the Financial Crisis

2009-09-28T01:56:00.004-04:00

If you want to understand just how the current financial crisis happened, listen to this broadcast of This American Life. Planet Money's Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson explain it in a way that is simple, entertaining and infuriating. These two guys are very good.

You owe it to yourself to listen to this one-hour program.

http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/390.mp3

Ruddy Duck Designs

2009-09-20T00:41:00.007-04:00

In the mid 1980's, Pat Harrington tried her hand at painting a wooden bowl. She has never stopped.

After retiring from teaching in 1997, Pat moved to Vermont to live and work. A self-taught artist, she combines painting with her love of wood and nature. Each of her hand-painted, decorative, wooden bowls is a one-of-a-kind creation. They come in a variety of designs and in sizes from 8 to 14 inches in diameter.

Pat purchases unfinished bowls in several different hardwoods from a bowl mill. She uses acrylic paint, stains and fine-tipped pens to decorate them and then finishes them with a water-based polyurethane finish. The grain of the wood including natural imperfections like holes and knots are frequently incorporated into her designs.

Pat’s bowls are intended for decorative use only, and they come with a stand for easy display. She refers to them as concave canvases.

Pat lives and paints in Rochester, Vermont. She displays her work at shows around Vermont throughout the year. You can see her bowls at the Vermont Handcrafters Fine Craft & Art Show in Burlington on November 19-22. The show is well worth the trip.

You can also see Pat’s work on her website at www.ruddyduckdesigns.com. Call her at 802-767-4589 or contact her by e-mail at pchrdd@gmail.com to purchase one of her beautiful bowls. You won’t be disappointed.

The Passive Political Voice

2009-09-19T23:30:00.003-04:00

Most writers avoid the passive voice. It makes our work sound weak and wishy-washy.

So it’s hard to understand why political speechwriters insist on using the passive voice for their clients’ speeches. It’s as if they want their clients to sound like impotent wimps. Or maybe their real goal is to relieve their clients of any responsibility for their actions.

We all know who made the reckless decision to invade Iraq, but all we have ever heard from George Bush is that decisions were made.

The Department of Homeland Security made catastrophic mistakes in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but all we ever heard was that mistakes were made.

The CIA and the military committed heinous war crimes in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but all we ever hear is that crimes were committed.

Our paid para-military goons in Iraq raped and shot civilians, stole supplies and sold them to anyone who had the money, but all we hear is that illegal activities took place.

Investment bankers ripped off the citizens of the United States for billions of dollars, but all we ever hear is that fraud was committed.

It’s time we insist on the active voice from our government.

The Mugging of the Common Good

2009-09-15T13:54:00.003-04:00

I was working on an article about how the financial, insurance and healthcare industries are manipulating our democracy for their own gain, when I came across this article by Robert Borosage. I can't say it any better.
Please take a minute and read it.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009093815/mugging-common-good

Bad Timing

2009-08-31T21:34:00.004-04:00

Driving home from work on Route 119 in Littleton MA one warm March afternoon, I passed a slow moving car in a legitimate passing zone. I stepped hard on the gas to complete the pass before the broken line turned solid. As I pulled back into my lane, I met a police cruiser traveling in the opposite direction. I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw his brake lights come on, so I made sure I stayed under the speed limit.

A short way down the road, the cop passed the same car and came flying up behind me with his blue lights flashing. I pulled off the road, took out my license and registration and rolled down the window. I watched in the mirror as the officer carefully donned his Stetson when he exited his vehicle.

He walked up beside my car and asked the usual questions. “May I see your license and registration please?” followed by “Do you know why I stopped you, Mr. Johnson?”

He had just finished the second question when a large truck roared by a few feet behind him. “Oh, shit,” he cursed under his breath as the immaculate Stetson blew off his head and tumbled into a mud puddle.

Have you ever experienced one of those times in life when you know you shouldn’t laugh at something but you can’t help yourself? Seeing this big burly cop chasing his hat into a very large puddle was too much for me. I couldn’t stifle a chuckle.

Unfortunately, he heard me.

My insolence was rewarded with a citation for speeding and passing on a solid line handed to me without a word. Since I wasn’t speeding and didn’t pass on the line, I decided right then to file an appeal.

Four weeks later, I went to the Ayer District Courthouse at the appointed time. The officer and I were called into the Clerk’s office for a hearing. I brought along a diagram of where I was when I passed and snapshots of the road.

I must have been convincing because the Clerk found in my favor. The law allowed the police officer to have the case reheard by a judge, and he requested it. As we walked out of the clerk’s office, the bailiff stepped up close.

“Just repeat what you said to the judge. This guy has a reputation as a hothead,” he whispered.

I walked down the hallway a short distance behind the officer, feeling pretty confident about the hearing. With my hands behind my back, I strolled toward the door to look outside. Suddenly, a security guard dashed over, grabbed me by the arm and yanked me away from the door.

“Where do you think you’re goi . . . oh, I thought you were cuffed,” he exclaimed.

“I’m only here for speeding,” I replied. We both saw the humor in the situation and exchanged smiles.

Fifteen minutes later, the police officer and I were standing in front of the judge, The cop went first and described what sounded almost like a high speed chase. I followed with my explanation of the road and my diagram and photos. The judge found in my favor, and the case was dismissed.

I was a very cautious driver in Littleton, Massachusetts for many months afterward.

Democrat or Republican—it doesn’t matter

2009-08-31T20:48:00.006-04:00

A narrow group of interests control our government by virtue of their financial support of both political parties. The reason that Barak Obama and the Democrats will not champion real financial or healthcare reform is because they need the financial support of Wall Street and the insurance, pharmaceutical and healthcare industries to get re-elected. Like the Republicans, they know where the money comes from.

Universal healthcare and re-regulation of the financial industry may be in the best interest of the public, but they’re not in the best interests of corporate America. These modern-day robber barons depend on the obscene profits generated by the current system. They will withdraw their financial support from any politician who champions real reform; and they’re the ones that fund political campaigns, not the public.

So, from the President on down, can we really expect any of them to champion real reform? Of course not. They'll talk a good fight and then cut deals that keep their campaign war chests full of cash for the next election. It's silly naiveté to think otherwise.

The Democrats used the progressive left to get elected in 2008 just like the Republicans used the religious right in 2000. Ideology is not important. Political control is what counts.

The only hope for any real change is for the public to stand up and demand it. Unfortunately, we’re all too busy trying to make ends meet. And they're counting on that.

New England Covered Bridges

2009-08-29T23:03:00.014-04:00

Covered wooden bridges were not invented in New England. They had been used in central Europe for several hundred years before they were built here. The ingenuity of six New Englanders, however, launched a whole new era in bridge construction.

In the late 1700s, America was growing. Rivers were a major obstacle to communication and land transportation. Bridges were needed for commerce and military protection, but deep water and spring flooding made low, piling-supported bridges impractical.

Haverhill MA (click on photo for larger view)

About this time, Timothy Palmer of Newburyport, Massachusetts and Theodore Burr of Torringford, Connecticut adapted European designs and became the first, successful builders of large wooden truss bridges in America. Both of these men were self-taught craftsmen who built numerous covered bridges all over the northeast. Old growth forests provided them with an abundant supply of large timbers.

Once the viability of large wooden bridges was proven, towns, toll-bridge companies and the infant railroad industry began building them in great numbers. By the early 1800’s, contractors were competing for a boom in building contracts.

Ithiel Town of New Haven, Stephen Long of Hopkinton, New Hampshire and William Howe of Spencer, Massachusetts came up with new truss designs that were easier to build than Palmer’s or Burr’s designs. All three patented and then licensed their designs to builders who used them all over America.

Taftsville VT

The unpatented Paddleford Truss was designed by Peter Paddleford of Monroe NH. About 1846, he remodeled the Long truss by replacing the counterbraces with a stiffening member fastened to the inside of the posts at points near the top and bottom chords. This resulted in an unusually strong and rigid structure.

Even with proven designs, bridge building was as much art as science. Bridge builders were ingenious and skilled craftsmen with little formal education. They relied on their training under a skilled master craftsman and their own experience. They knew the characteristics of the materials they worked with — not only how to cut and shape the timbers, but what the load bearing strength was. If there is such as thing as folk engineering, this was it.

Narragansett RI

For me, the most fascinating aspect of New England covered bridges is the superb craftsmanship. Because a wooden truss bridge’s strength comes from being under constant compression, every timber and joint in the timber frame must precisely fit to evenly distribute the load. And a typical 100-foot lattice type bridge could have almost a thousand hand-cut, hand-pegged joints.

There have been numerous stories about why these bridges were covered, but the real answer is simple. They were covered to protect the trusses from the weather. If water was allowed to settle into the joints and rot the wood, the life of the bridge would be short.

The fact that wooden covered bridges built nearly two hundred years ago are still in service is a testimonial to their design and the craftsmanship with which they were built. With good supervision and maintenance many of these will last for years to come.

W. Stewartstown NH

Townshend VT

New Sharon ME

Grim predictions come true

2009-08-28T01:54:00.007-04:00

President Dwight Eisenhower understood war and the military industrial complex as only an experienced warrior can. In his last speech as President in 1961, he warned us about the United States in which we now live.

1. He warned us that our country’s prestige could be lost:
“We yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.”

2. He warned that an overly powerful military industrial complex could lead the country into unwarranted wars:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

3. He warned about an imbalance between private and public interests:
“But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future.”

4. He warned about plundering the earth’s resources:
“As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”

5. He warned about getting caught up in fear and hatred:
“Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”

Very insightful for a President mostly remembered for his golf game. Maybe that's why we didn't listen.

Ted Kennedy

2009-08-26T23:03:00.003-04:00

I never met Ted Kennedy. I voted for him in my first election after moving to Massachusetts and every election after that until I moved out of the state forty years later.

As my senator, I was always proud of his stand on the issues. I was less proud of his private life when he was younger, but I saw him grow and mature into a person I could admire and respect in all ways.

He was a champion of the common man even though he had no reason to be and a hard worker though he had no need to be. He was the surviving son in a wealthy family who could have easily spent his life dabbling in business, playing polo and sailing on the family yacht.

I never understood the hatred that many conservatives had for him. It was like he stood for everything that was wrong with the federal government, politicians and America in general.

I still remember a bumper sticker I saw on an Arizona pickup truck in 1989: “The only good Kennedy is a dead Kennedy”. The driver didn’t look like he was into punk rock bands.

We would all be more fortunate if there were more politicians on both sides of the aisle in the Senate who were as committed to American democracy as Ted Kennedy.

Julie Y. Baker Albright --Still Life Painter

2009-08-20T01:01:00.007-04:00

Julie Y. Baker Albright is a 6th generation Vermonter. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Vermont, Julie started in the arts as a potter. From clay, she moved on to watercolor and then to oil painting.

Julie paints in north light from life in the classical style. Her strong drawing skills were developed through years of drawing figure studies and her children.

She finds beauty in man-made objects and often includes pieces made by fellow artists in her still-life paintings. Julie also uses organic objects from her garden and from the fields near her studio. While the objects she chooses to paint are often common, she captures an uncommon beauty from the cool north light and the warmth of the shadows. She masterfully uses her paint to create the 3-dimensional illusion.

Landscape paintings have become an increasing part of Julie’s work in recent years. She travels the state’s back roads looking for small family farms and says Vermont offers all the inspiration she needs.

Julie’s paintings are available from her studio as well as from galleries in Boston, Vermont and Pensylvania. Her work has been exhibited in over 40 juried exhibitions across the country. She’s a member of the Oil Painters of America, The Copley Society of Boston, Academic Artists Association and the Hudson Valley Art Association.

Julie lives and works in Essex VT with her family. You can see more of her beautiful work at her website: www.julieybakeralbright.com. You can reach her by phone at 802-878-0644 or by email at jyba@comcast.net

Woodstock

2009-08-20T00:37:00.002-04:00

The recent 40th anniversary of Woodstock brought back memories.

I bought our tickets in advance. On Thursday evening, I dropped the kids off with my mother for the weekend; and on Friday morning, my wife and I left from our apartment in Lincoln MA.

We were in central MA on Route 117 in our trusty Volkswagen Beetle when some kids ambushed the car with green apples. I stopped the car, but the boys ran into the orchard. I knew it was pointless to chase them.

One apple had shattered the windshield, making a golf ball-sized hole and leaving it so concave that the windshield wipers wouldn't make contact. We continued on, determined to get to the festival.

It started to rain. I couldn't see the road. Rain poured in the hole in the windshield. The radio said that the NY Thruway was already closed.

We turned back.

I’ve often wondered if my life would have been in any way different but for that one green apple.

Killing the geese

2009-07-03T23:38:00.001-04:00

The subprime mortgage scam was the tipping point that brought on the Wall Street meltdown that created our current economic crisis. Or so goes the official explanation.

But this crisis might not have been a crisis, if the middle class was economically stronger.

For the last thirty years, the oligarchs who run our country as a for-profit enterprise have passed legislation that slowly moved the nation’s wealth upward. They stripped the middle class of its economic power until our bank accounts and cookie jars are finally empty.

Now we’re forced to help them jump-start their cash machines by mortgaging our grandchildrens’ earnings. Other than some minor tax law tinkering, little has been done to change the economic injustices that got us into this pickle.

A strong democracy depends on an economically robust middle class. We are the geese that lay the golden eggs that the rich so covet.

American Atrocities

2009-07-03T23:23:00.005-04:00

We Americans have a short memory about atrocity. Over the last 350 years, we’ve perpetrated numerous atrocities, yet they’re first rationalized and then forgotten. And pretending they never happened is what allows them to reoccur.

For the first three hundred years after we invaded and colonized what became the United States, we committed just about every imaginable atrocity against the Native Americans who lived here.

We exploited their naiveté by swindling them out of their lands and signing dozens of treaties we had no intention of keeping. We massacred them in their sleep, indiscriminately killing men, women and children. We hunted them down like animals and then force-marched them to concentration camps where we starved them to death. We used germ warfare against them by deliberately infecting them with fatal diseases. We rounded them up and then staged mass executions. We took their children away from them for reprogramming into Christianity.

For more than 200 years, we used Africans as farm animals and personal servants even though we knew they had been kidnapped against their will. We chained and mistreated them. We bought and sold them as chattel. We branded them and raped them. We hunted them down like animals. We took their children away from them to be sold as livestock.

During the Civil War, both the North and the South put fellow American soldiers into concentration camps where they were starved to death, mistreated and forced to live in unimaginable squalor.

In World War II, we dropped thousands of tons of conventional bombs on German and Japanese cities with no regard to the civilians who were living there. We put American citizens of Japanese descent into concentrations camps. We dropped thermonuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima when the war was all but over, killing 250,000 people and injuring countless more.

In Vietnam, we killed between two and three million Vietnamese with our "carpet bombing" and committed uncounted massacres where innocent civilians were wantonly executed. Other than William Calley, few were even reprimanded.

As part of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, we have killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians and 20,00 Afghani civilians. We have routinely kidnapped, held without charge, mistreated, sexually assaulted, sodomized and raped prisoners who may or may not even be guilty of anything. We have systematically tortured captives in violation of the Geneva Conventions. We have allowed military contractors to beat, rape and kill civilians with virtually no accountability.

The facts of these atrocities are not disputed by anyone. They are recorded in newspapers and history books. They are supported by documentation, witnesses and photographs. Yet, we still deny them. These atrocities are the dirty laundry that we refuse to wash.

Until we own up and accept the blame for these atrocities, we will keep committing them.

Faith-based Education

2009-07-03T23:17:00.000-04:00

It takes a leap of faith to believe
that how well students do
on standardized tests
has anything to do with
the quality of their education.

It’s like trying to use a wooden ruler
to measure the volume of a balloon.

Junkyards

2009-07-03T23:09:00.004-04:00

My granddaughter, Annabelle, needed a replacement wheel for her car after hitting a curb. I volunteered to pick up a used one at a local junkyard. Because I spend so many hours a week banging on this keyboard, I jump on a good reason to get outside for a couple of hours.

I called the closest junkyard still in operation, a small family-owned business in the next town. A pleasant-sounding man told me they had a wheel. I hit the sleep key on my computer and headed out the door.

When I got there, the place seemed deserted. I went into the small but neat office where I found a man busily packaging auto parts. There was already a sizeable pile of boxes by the door.

‘Hello, there. I’m the one who called about the wheel,” I announced.

“99 Pontiac Grand Am. Right?”

“Yup.”

He picked up a walkie-talkie from the counter.

“Hey, Dennis. You out in the yard?”

“Yeah. What do you need?”

“Can you put your hands on a 14-inch Grand Am wheel--steel not alloy?”

“I’ll have to take one off.”

The pleasant-sounding man looked over at me. “You mind waiting?”

“Nope.”

“Dennis, pull one off and bring it down.”

He looked back at me again. “He’ll only be a few minutes.”

Then he went back to his work. After each part was packaged, he went to the computer and printed out a packing slip and label for the next one.

“Where are all these packages going,” I asked.

“All over. Mostly Mexico, South America and Africa.”

“That far?”

“Hell, there’s no money in local business any more. People trade in their cars before they break and a lot of those go overseas where there are no parts to fix ‘em. We do most of our business online these days. Everything’s paid by credit card and shipped UPS.”

I looked at the pile by the door and counted eighteen packages ready to go.

“You ship this many every day?”

“Pretty much.”

The phone rang. It was a nice day so I stepped outside. When Dennis appeared, I went back in and paid the pleasant-sounding man twenty dollars. On the ride home, I remembered a story that I had written more than twenty years ago.

I had to copy it from a 3.5-inch floppy disk and make a few corrections, but here it is:

To get back and forth to college, my son drives an old Volvo station wagon that doesn’t have the good sense to die gracefully. It has clocked more than a quarter million miles but is still fairly dependable.

The starter died the other day, and he couldn’t afford a new one. So we called around the local junkyards until we found a used one, then drove over to pick it up.

I hadn’t been to a junkyard for years, and things had certainly changed. The place we went wasn’t really a junkyard. It was more like a used auto parts store. We parked outside a ten-foot high chain link fence with barbed wire along the top and iridescent red, attack-dog warning signs every thirty feet.

The office was bustling with computer terminals, ringing phones, several casually dressed counter men and a good Saturday morning turnout. The room was Spartan but clean with several vending machines off to one side. The wall behind the long counter was covered with auto parts manufacturer posters.

We stood at the end of the line. At least the customers hadn’t changed much. They were still the same mix of shade-tree mechanics.

When we finally reached the counter, the man said they didn’t have a starter off the car.

“You can take it off yourself if you have your own tools or pay five dollars to have it removed.”

We didn’t have the tools so we had to pay the extra five bucks. He filled out a Part Removal Authorization form and handed it to us with brief but polite instructions.

“Up the center drive, seventeenth row on the right. Find what you want and give the pink copy to Skip. He’ll be in the yellow pickup.”

We found the part and Skip. He made short work of getting the starter off a battered, white four-door sedan with only 170,000 miles on the odometer. He put the pink copy on his clipboard and an initialed tag on the part. Everything neat and business-like.

As we walked back to the office, I explained to my son how junkyards had changed.

The junkyard I went to as a teenager was different. The only dogs were scruffy but friendly mutts. The only fences were stonewalls with sagging wooden gates.

Bob Wilson’s house stood on a neatly mowed knoll under an immense elm tree--an island in a sea of decaying automobilia. There were red geraniums planted in white-painted tires and a sandbox filled with Tonka trucks.

Everything outside of the yard was as overgrown as the yard was neat. Behind the house were a large cinder block garage, several sheds, a chicken coop, a couple of old school busses and truck bodies. Bob used the garage to dismantle cars. The rest provided storage for parts that were worth keeping out of the weather.

The cars sat in rows somewhat sorted by make and model. If you looked around, you could find cars you knew. Cars you had ridden in. Some were grim reminders of accidents involving people you knew. Others of awkward, adolescent experiments in love.

Each time I went, I checked to see whether the weathered old 1946 Pontiac that my mother drove when I was in grade school had eluded Bob’s torches. Or the worn-out 1949 Mercury that my cousin Phillip gave me when he graduated from law school. Sooner or later, the picked clean carcasses were dragged down back and burned. Then they were cut up for scrap.

Everything sat in waist deep hay with roadways worn down to the dirt between the rows of cars. In the summer, daisies and black-eyed susans bloomed between the cars.

Most of the cars lay with their bellies in the dirt, but a few lay helplessly on their roofs like overturned turtles.

Bob’s mobile tool bench was an ancient red panel truck with no doors, fenders or hood. In faded lettering on each side were the words “Coffee Time” surrounded by musical notes. The back end sagged under its burden of acetylene and oxygen bottles and overflowing toolboxes.

A huge vice was mounted on the homemade diamond-plate steel back bumper. At each corner was an outlandishly oversized tire. Because it never left the junkyard, it had no need for lights, horn or muffler. This was a vehicle that made no pretenses or excuses. What it lacked in finesse, it made up for in utility.

During the week, Bob worked hard in all weather dismantling and cutting up cars, loading the pieces on his big flatbed truck and delivering them to scrap metal dealers. On Saturdays, however, you could find Bob in the small office attached to the garage.

The office was furnished with two school bus seats and an oil-stained oak desk. Fancy hubcaps decorated the walls. A wood stove sat in front of one of the windows with a stove pipe running out through a piece of asbestos that replaced one of the window panes. A tool company calendar picturing a busty blonde whose bathing suit was printed on an acetate overlay hung on the inside door to the garage.

Bob sat in an old office chair with his feet up on the desk swapping stories with his customers. A car radio perched on the windowsill next to the desk. It was connected to a car battery on the floor below and an antenna wire hanging out the window. The baseball game was usually crackling out of the speaker lying next to the radio.

In this world, Bob was philosopher and sage. He passed out information with Yankee directness and frugality, generously peppered with four-letter words. A big man in soiled green coveralls, he was a walking compendium of cross-referenced parts from one make or model to another. And he seemed to know every car in his yard including which parts were still intact and most likely to work.

He ran an honest business and appreciated an honest customer. In fact everything pretty much worked on the honor system. Bob could tell you where you would most likely find the parts you needed. Then you could drive right in so you wouldn’t have to carry tools and parts back and forth. You stopped by the office on the way out to talk price. If the part was no good when you put it on, he’d give you another—no questions asked.

About this time, my son and I reached the office with the Volvo starter in hand. The cashier examined the tag and printed out a sales slip. We paid thirty dollars plus five for removal.

In the car on the way home, I was continuing my reminiscence when my son’s favorite band came on the radio. He turned up the volume and the conversation turned to getting the car going in time for his evening date.

Sheep Shear Cuttings

2009-07-03T22:56:00.007-04:00

I recently discovered an artist that lives just over the Connecticut River in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Carolyn Guest practices a form of paper cutting called wycinanki (vee-chee-non-kee).

This art form originated in the early 19th Century when Polish sheepherders cut designs out of tree bark and leather with sheep shears. The designs were often used to decorate their homes or given as gifts.

Apple Picnic

The techniques were passed down from generation to generation. As the years passed, the paper cuttings became more detailed and intricate. Town and village competitions evolved, producing beautiful multi-colored and multi-layered wycinanki. Traditional subject matter included peacocks, roosters and other birds, circular or star-shaped medallions, flowers and decorative scenes depicting holidays.

Carolyn became intrigued with this traditional Polish folk art after working in Poland as an International 4-H Youth Exchange delegate. She began cutting with the traditional Polish sheep shears and continues to cut with her first pair of 13-inch shears using techniques she learned from Polish paper cutters.

Morning Call

Carolyn grew up on a farm in Lyndon, Vermont and was an active 4-H Club member. Folk art and crafts were always a big part of her life. Paper cutting has become a way for her express her creativity and portray her rural Vermont heritage. She has traveled to Poland and several other countries to study with paper cutters.

Carolyn continues to challenge herself by cutting ever more elaborate designs using her sheep shears. She was one of ten Vermont artists featured in a traveling exhibit “Ten Artists View of Vermont Agriculture” sponsored by the Vermont Council of the Arts and Vermont Department of Agriculture in 2002. She was also one of five Vermont artists who made ornaments for the 2002 White House Christmas Tree.

4-H Barn

You can find Carolyn’s work on her website at www.sheepshearcuttings.com, and you can contact her at carolyn@sheepshearcuttings.com

The healthcare controversy

2009-07-03T22:49:00.002-04:00

The healthcare controversy boils down to this:
Are we willing to allow corporate insurance,
pharmaceutical and healthcare profiteers
get rich because people get ill?

Corporate vs. Public Interests

2009-07-03T22:19:00.003-04:00

The issue isn't that large corporations are evil. It's that they must be profitable. They have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for their shareholders, even when that goal is not in the best interests of the general public.

We like corporations because they stimulate innovation, create jobs and provide necessary goods and services. The legal benefits and protections that help young corporations grow and prosper are the same ones that allow them to run amok when they become behemoths.

The idea behind corporate law is to allow people to form corporations so their businesses will thrive and then benefit society. We give corporations lower tax rates and special deductions. We allow them to establish credit and to raise money by selling shares to investors. We give them life that goes beyond that of the original owners. Then we give the owners protection from nearly all personal liability.

These protections are precisely the ones that allow large corporations to produce shoddy, dangerous products with little accountability, to make outrageous profits while paying little or no taxes, to pay executives obscene salaries, to artificially inflate or deflate stock prices as needed, and to put themselves into bankruptcy or sell out to another corporation for liquidation if necessary.

The real trouble comes when corporations become so big a part of our economy that we can’t control them. Then we’re facing extremely powerful opponents with interests that run contrary to public interests. They have the resources to flood Washington with lobbyists to influence Congress, to run national propaganda campaigns and to support political candidates who are loyal to them.

These juggernauts have dismantled government regulations that were put in place to protect us from them after the last great economic meltdown.

Who represents the public?

War is Betrayal

2009-05-27T22:54:00.001-04:00

War is always betrayal.
Betrayal of the young by the old,
betrayal of idealists by cynics,
and betrayal of soldiers by politicians.

This betrayal has burned the souls
of America's Iraq War veterans
and produced a wave of walking wounded
not seen since the Vietnam War.

It has also provided an opportunity
for those of us who stayed at home
to learn about the hideous reality of war
and understand our complicity in the betrayal.

Tug of War

2009-05-27T22:35:00.001-04:00

We don’t often see bears in Northern New Hampshire.

So when my son, my wife and I spotted a good-sized black bear lumbering down an old bypassed section of Route 302 in Twin Mountain at dusk, we drove to the other end hoping to get a better look.

When we got there, we found a bicycle tourist setting up a small tent on a grassy area next to the bypassed road. We pulled up to warn him about the bear. As soon as we rolled down the car window, the bear came out of the woods behind the man and started pulling his bicycle into the bushes to get at the food in the saddlebags.

We were safe inside the car, but the man began a tug of war with the bear. We told him to let go of the bicycle and get in the car, but he yelled back at us, "That bike cost me twelve-hundred bucks and it's got all my special food." We again advised him to get in the car, and again he refused. When the bear roared and lunged at him, the man finally let go of the bicycle.

The bear pulled the bike into the bushes and began tearing at the saddlebags. The cyclist started yelling and making threatening gestures at the bear. We warned him that wasn't a smart thing to do since he was only eight or ten feet away from a full-grown bear, but he wouldn't listen.

Suddenly the bear roared and charged at him. The man ran behind our car, and the bear fortunately turned back to the bike.

We called the police. While we waited for them to come, the cyclist stood next to the car ranting about his bike and his special food. The bear was busy shredding the saddlebags and their contents.

When the police arrived, the officer told us the game warden was on his way with a tranquilizer gun and asked us to leave. We drove away wondering what would have happened had we not come along.

Just plane sculptures

2009-05-27T21:09:00.010-04:00

I make these airplane sculptures. I saw something similar a couple of years ago in an antique shop and thought “I could do better than that.”

I start with an old carpenter’s plane. The size and shape of the plane determine what kind of an airplane it will be.

The other parts come from architectural salvage shops. I look for recycled odds and ends — old hide stretchers or barrel staves for the wings, faucet handles for propellers, old furniture casters for landing gear and architectural details for decoration.

Then I assemble the pieces and add some decorative painting. I try not to make them too realistic. They’re caricatures.

I’m not sure what to do with them. They fall a little outside of the traditional folk art realm, so I hang them on the front porch in the good weather.

Send me an email if you'd like to buy one.

WW II Bomber

Fokker Biplane

French Hunter

Sopwith Camel

U.S. Pursuit Plane

Another quagmire

2009-05-26T13:36:00.001-04:00

The Obama Administration's assumption that we can somehow impose our will on Afghanistan is as flawed now as it was in Iraq or Vietnam. Russia learned this lesson the hard way after nine long bloody years in Afghanistan. Have we learned nothing from history?

We need a serious national debate on US military intervention in Afghanistan. The Obama Administration admits that the region's problems can't be solved by military means, yet they're increasing our military presence in Afghanistan.

This has the very real potential to be another endless quagmire. We have already squandered too many American lives and too much of our financial resources in the Middle East.

Where is the voice of reason that we employ all other means before committing us to another endless military campaign?

Can we look before we leap this time?

Second Grade Secret

2009-05-26T00:54:00.012-04:00

I had a crush on my second grade teacher.

Miss Contagogo was young and slender with dark hair and eyes. I wanted her to like me in return.

I was a daydreamer in school. I still am. My teachers were constantly reminding me to pay attention and stop looking out the window.

One day, Miss Contagogo caught me looking out the window.

“Pay attention, Karl. You’re acting like a first-grader. If you don’t stop looking out the window, I’ll send you back to first grade,” she scolded.

I don’t remember what attracted my attention out the window a few minutes later; but when I turned to look, she caught me again.

“That’s it, Karl. I’m sending you to first grade so you can learn to pay attention.”

I was devastated. The love of my life humiliated me in front of the whole class. Worse still, she was sending me to the first grade. My cheeks burned. I fought to hold back the tears.

Miss Contagogo wrote a note and handed it to me.

“You walk down to the Town Hall and give this to the first grade teacher,” she directed in a stern voice. I walked out of the room, my head bowed in shame.

Photo by Lynne Monroe

The Town of Hollis was growing in 1950, and the old school building would no longer accommodate all twelve grades. So the first-grade class was moved to the lower floor of the town hall, which sat several hundred yards away on the town common.

Outside the school, I burst into tears. I descended the concrete steps and went down the long front walk, convinced my classmates were watching me and laughing. I crossed the street and walked down the hill past the ball field, library and church, clutching the terrible note.

I was still sobbing as I approached the town hall. I didn’t want to face the first grade teacher or her students. They would know I was kicked out of class. They would all see I had been crying.

Photo by Howard Bigelow

I stopped in front of the heavy wooden doors. I couldn’t go through with it.

I turned and ran behind the Town Hall and hid beneath the wooden fire escape. I sat in the cool shade and cried myself to sleep, only to be awakened by the chiming of the tower clock striking the hour.

I spent the next few hours hiding from imaginary foes, stacking a pile of discarded bricks into a wall around my hiding place and drawing pictures with a stick in an area of the dirt that I smoothed out with one of the bricks.

The only person I saw was a woman driving out the road from the house behind the Town Hall. I ducked down as she drove by, so she wouldn’t see me.

I was hungry and scared, but I devised a plan.

I knew school ended at two o’clock. I’d wait until the clock struck two and then walk back to school. The rest of the class would be gone by then, so I wouldn’t have to face them.

I buried the note in the dirt beneath the wooden stairs. If Miss Contagogo asked, I’d tell her everything went fine.

The hours dragged by. I remember counting twelve rings, then one and finally two.

I brushed off my clothes and left my hiding place. As I walked back up to the school, I tried to remember things we did the previous year in case Miss Contagogo asked. I was terrified she would find out.

I saw the school buses coming down the driveway as I walked up the hill toward the Red & White store. I was too ashamed to look up as my bus passed by.

I crossed the street and walked up the long front walk. A group of high school girls sitting on the lawn giggled as I passed by. I was sure they were laughing at me.

When I walked into the classroom, Miss Contagogo was sitting at her desk working. She looked up.

“I hope you learned your lesson,” she said sternly. “You go to your seat. I’ll call your mother to pick you up.”

I sat down at my desk. I had never heard the school so quiet.

Miss Contagogo walked out of the room. I listened to her footsteps as she climbed the wooden front stairs and walked back to the office on the second floor. A few minutes later, I heard her coming back down.

“Your mother will be here soon,” she told me.

I reached into my desk and took out my favorite coloring book and crayons. I began coloring a picture of a cowboy sitting on his horse and waving to the engineer of an old-fashioned train.

Miss Contagogo finished her work and left. When my mother arrived, I didn’t tell her what happened.

For the rest of the year, I waited for my secret to be exposed; but it never was.

Miss Contagogo got married a few weeks later. I remember her writing her new name on the chalkboard for us. She didn’t return the next fall.

I told my mother my secret not long before she died. She never knew.

The Real Problem with Newspapers

2009-05-26T00:14:00.004-04:00

The Internet has presented a problem for traditional newspapers. They’re all wailing about losing money, and many journalistic icons are struggling to keep their headlines above water.

But the real problem facing newspapers is their self-inflicted lack of credibility. Somewhere in the middle of the Clinton era, even the most respected newspapers began peddling stories that were more about sensationalism than substance. Maybe it was O.J.’s gloves or Monica’s blue dress, but the media seemed to become more obsessed with lurid details than real journalism.

Fueled by the attack on the World Trade Center and encouraged by the Bush Administration’s army of propagandists, newspapers gave up any pretense of legitimate journalism and began peddling government Newspeak. They allowed themselves to be manipulated by spin doctors. They became mouthpieces for the military invasion and occupation of Iraq. They switched from investigative journalism to reprinting government and corporate press releases.

Newspapers aren’t selling because they no longer offer anything of value. When faced with an army of new media rivals, they gave up on the first part of their name—NEWS.

Newspapers were successful because the public could count on them to provide up-to-date, well-written, well-researched news in an inexpensive, convenient format. The era of the traditional, oversized newsprint format may be ending, but the need for real journalism is greater than ever.

If newspapers are to survive, they must find their niche. They need to provide readers with something they can’t get elsewhere. Honest journalism. Quality writing. Convenience. And yes, advertising. It remains to be seen whether they can figure that out.

Memorial Day 2009

2009-05-25T23:48:00.004-04:00

It’s impossible to place a value on a human life
that has been sacrificed on the field of war.
Throughout our country’s history,
courageous men and women have died
defending lives and freedom.
The measure of their life’s worth
is what their death accomplished.

The tragedy of this Memorial Day is
that the beautiful and gallant young Americans
who sacrificed their lives in the invasion of Iraq
died for no good reason.
Their deaths achieved nothing.
Their mutilated limbs and minds were wasted.
The suffering of their families was for naught.
All because they were recklessly committed
to an ill-conceived and illegal war
that has no justification.

The best way for us to give value to the sacrifices
made by these brave soldiers is to not let
their children and grandchildren suffer the same fate.
We must make these heroes' deaths and injuries
count for something by ending
this 21st Century Holy War.

Ginny Joyner

2009-04-24T13:44:00.003-04:00

Ginny Joyner is an artist, illustrator, decorative painter and educator. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in illustration but has gone on to be far more than an illustrator.

Ginny has done illustration work for Harper Collins Publishers, Sleeping Bear Press, W.S. Badger, The Baltimore Sun Eating Well Magazine Gardener’s Supply, Vermont Teddy Bear and many other clients. She also teaches classes at St. Michaels College and gives presentations in Vermont schools to encourage art in children of all ages.

She illustrated the book M is for Maple Syrup, which was written by Cynthia Furlong Reynolds. The book is a window into Vermont history, culture and lore for children 3-12.

Ginny works in several mediums including watercolor, acrylics, pen and ink and scratchboard. Her delicate watercolors of orchids, butterflies and antique china are exquisite.

Ginny lives in Colchester, Vermont. You can buy her work in shops and galleries in Shelburne, Stowe, Burlington, Manchester and Middlebury, Vermont as well as Nantucket MA. She also exhibits every November at the prestigious Vermont Hand Crafters Fine Art & Craft Show in Burlington, Vermont.

You can see more of Ginny’s fabulous work at www.ginnyjoyner.com

Volvo Duett

2009-04-24T00:56:00.022-04:00

I own a 1967 Volvo 210 Duett. I’ve had it for thirty-eight years. Maybe it now owns me.

If you don’t know what a Volvo Duett looks like, picture a small 1940s panel truck with windows. The name Duett came from Volvo’s intent that it was a dual-purpose car. It could be used for daily transportation and for weekend excursions.

I don’t have a recent photo of my car, because it’s stored in a friend’s barn; but I did find one like it in the Volvo museum.

My love affair with these cars began in 1959 when I was fifteen. My mother bought a shiny new red-and-gray 445 Duett. It was the car I drove when I first got my driver’s license -- a funny-looking little Swedish car with a twin-carbureted sports-car engine and a blatting exhaust.

The car combined funky good looks, practical utility and excellent performance. It had better acceleration and fuel economy than many contemporary American models. It was also the car I was driving when some guy from the next town ran a stop sign and hit me nearly head on.

There were seven of us in the car. Thanks to its rugged construction, none of us were killed; but the car was destroyed. My mother wanted to buy another, but she couldn’t find one. Volvo only produced a few thousand a year, and they were never regularly imported to the U.S.

I found a Duett when I graduated from college -- a rusted, worn-out 1958 model that got me back and forth to my first post-college job. It consumed a quart of motor oil for each tank full of gas and had almost no brakes, a serious deficiency for commuting in and out of Boston every day—particularly when Route 2 west of Boston was under reconstruction. Slow moving construction vehicles often brought rush hour traffic to a sudden halt. On several occasions, I had to execute some heart-stopping evasive maneuvers.

While driving in the car with my wife one weekend, I spotted another one in good condition and flagged down the owner. We swapped stories; and I asked him to let me know if he was ever interested in selling. I got a call a few weeks later and bought the car for $600.

I parked the old one in the woods behind my mother’s house to save for parts. It eventually went to the junkyard.

I now had a reliable, shiny dark blue and gray 1958 445 Duett. It looked great and attracted a lot of interest. Everywhere I went in the car, people commented on it. And the very few times I met another one was an occasion to stop and talk.

I drove the car for three years. I loaned it to my boss one day, and he smashed it into a phone pole. I was devastated. It was repairable but would never be the same again. I sold it to a friend who patched it together and drove it several more years before parking it in a field behind his Vermont farmhouse. It was still there last I knew.

On my way home from work three years later, I passed a shiny dark blue 210 Duett. I turned around, followed the driver home and pulled into his driveway behind him. When I asked if he was interested in selling the car, he admitted that his wife was after him to get a more conventional car. A few days and $1100 later, it was mine.

The car was in good physical condition, but had already traveled more than 150,000 stop-and-go miles as a newspaper delivery vehicle. I installed a highly modified engine, beefed-up suspension, oversized tires on wide orange wheels, Italian driving lamps, garishly flowered window curtains and an eight-track stereo system (Remember, this was 1971).

It was great sport to out-accelerate the hot imports of the day at stoplight encounters. My hopped-up Duett left many a surprised BMW 2002 and Datsun 240 in the dust.

The car was my pride and joy. It was fun, fast and attracted lots of attention. I never let anyone else drive it for fear of having this one wrecked too.

I drove that car for six years, logging more than 150,000 additional miles. With our three young children, my wife and I traveled, camped and enjoyed many memorable family adventures in that car. It was part of the family. When it finally began to show its age at more than 300,000 miles, I bought another car and stored the Duett in my garage to be restored.

Years later, I was visiting with my good friends, Malcolm and Kathy Lee, when the subject of my 210 Duett came up. I described the car to Kathy, since I didn’t know her when I was driving the car.

Her face lit up. “I know that car. My sister and I drove it for several days.”

“You must be thinking of a different car," I told her. "I never let anyone drive that car.”

“I did. It had bright orange wheels, wild flowered curtains in the back windows and a little plastic Cookie Monster glued to the dash. A body shop in Acton loaned it to me while they painted my car.”

The Cookie Monster clinched it. I had my car repainted at the same body shop. They loaned it out without ever telling me.

Thirty years later, it still isn’t complete. But I haven’t given up.

The Duett has gained a cult following for its individuality, utility and rarity. And it was one of the Volvos that helped the company earn its reputation for durability.

Every so often, I do a Google images search for Volvo Duett and save photos I find. Here are a few of my favorites:

If Volvo were ever to produce a retro Duett, I have some ideas about what it might look like.

A disclaimer: I lost most of the photos that I took of my Volvos over the years. With the exception of the 445 in the Vermont field and the two black and white photos, I used photos of similar cars that I found online to illustrate this entry. I hope the owners of these photos don’t object to my including them here.

No Amnesty for Torturers

2009-04-24T00:42:00.003-04:00

If the United States expects to be taken seriously as the champion for human rights in the world, we have no choice but to prosecute those people who knowingly violated international law by torturing prisoners of war. We can't let lawbreakers hide behind the Bush Administration's bogus interpretations of those laws.

All lawbreakers are responsible for their own behavior. They don’t relinquish that responsibility when they work for the federal government. It becomes even more important.

The Obama Administration had no choice but to release memos about Bush Administration senior officials' complicity in torturing these prisoners. It was in response to a judicial ruling.

President Obama announced that he does not favor prosecution of those government agents who carried out this systematic torture. By saying this, he is sending the world the message that you and I condone torture.

Both the actual perpetrators and their bosses should be held accountable for their actions--as far up the ladder as the evidence leads. An independent prosecutor must be immediately appointed to conduct a thorough, impartial investigation. War crimes require a legal decision by the courts, not a political decision by the President.

Bill Harley -- storyteller, songwriter, singer and author

2009-04-24T00:22:00.004-04:00

Bill Harley is a rare gem. In addition to being a storyteller, songwriter, singer and author, Bill is a wonderful entertainer. He captivates kids.

If you see Bill perform, you get the feeling that some part of his brain never grew up. It’s that part that lets him relate so well to kids. He knows how they think.

Bill has written songs and stories for kindergarteners, primary school kids and middle schoolers. And they all make you remember what it felt like to be that age.

Bill was a favorite of my grandchildren and is now entertaining and educating my great-grandchildren. As you can tell, he’s also a favorite of mine. His songs and stories are just as delightful, contagious and funny now as they were when I took my granddaughters to see him perform almost twenty years ago.

In a new blog, Bill plans to talk about the culture of schools. He estimates that he’s given performances in nearly two thousand schools in his career. Since there are few people who have been in that many schools, Bill has a unique perspective on school culture today.

Check out his new blog at http://billharley.wordpress.com. It can’t help but be good reading.

You can also treat your children and grandchildren to Bill’s songs and stories, by visiting his website store at www.billharley.com. They’ll love him. So will you.

Forgotten passion

2009-04-23T10:50:00.001-04:00

I wanted to be a poet, but I never found the time.
I was always too busy making a living and being a Dad,
too caught up in life to follow my literary dream.
So I buried my passion at the bottom of an old trunk in the attic
with the idea that I would dig it out someday and begin anew.

I found it there the other day among a bunch of handwritten journals.
It reminded me of an unwound watch that stopped years ago,
an anachronistic chronometer of little use in the 21 Century.

The A Word

2009-04-23T10:23:00.006-04:00

Ever since I was a young boy sitting in a rural Congregational church, I have felt that Christianity was a sham.

I loved the Sunday school stories about Jesus. He was my first super hero. He was stronger than all those Romans and Philistines combined. He was a courageous idealist who died for his beliefs.

I liked singing the hymns. Even though I thought the words were silly and redundant, it made me feel grownup to sing with the adults of the church.

And I liked the sermons. Our minister was a good speaker who was able to relate his lessons to life in a small 1950s New England town.

But it was clear to me then as it is now that most people only practice Christianity when they’re at church. Even at that age, I understood that society doesn’t really adhere to “Christian” values.

In that small town, everyone knew everyone else’s business. I knew who was kind, generous and tolerant, and who wasn’t. All I had to do was to look around in church to see that many of the people that acted like Jesus never came to church and many who didn’t came every week.

I heard hate speech on the radio from the McCarthy Hearings where Christians vilified non-Christian Communists. I saw in the newspapers the way Christians treated Blacks. I learned in school how Christians exterminated thousands of native Americans and how Christians dropped two bombs that incinerated 100,000 Japanese civilians when the war with Japan was pretty much over.

As I stared up at the church chandeliers, I realized that Christianity was a private social club where members forgave each other for their bad behavior. I can’t say precisely when it happened, but I gave up on Christianity.

At first, I thought of myself as an agnostic. That seemed socially acceptable. I saw how Christians treated non-believers, and I wasn’t ready to be socially ostracized before I was even a teenager.

So I kept quiet about my beliefs. I’m not as brave as my boyhood hero.

Fifty years later, I still don’t discuss my beliefs with anyone. I know that I need to be accepted by fellow townspeople to be elected to Town offices. I know that business relationships are based on common interests and beliefs. And above all, I don’t want my children and grandchildren to be discriminated against by Christians.

So I never use the A word. Maybe because Jesus still is my hero.

Hard Times

2009-04-23T10:18:00.001-04:00

While many Americans have suffered financial losses in the current economic meltdown, few really understand what it’s like to be poor. A lot of us fear poverty, but most of us don’t have a clue what it’s like to live in poverty day after day after day.

Those who complain about their 401K losing 50% of its value don’t understand what it's like to choose between food and fuel oil. Those forced to switch from employer-supported health insurance to a COBRA plan won’t have to ignore symptoms and avoid the doctor. They won’t have their childrens' teeth pulled instead of repaired because it’s cheaper.

Most Americans will never experience the shame of justifying their situation to a cynical welfare worker. They won’t beg a utility for a few extra days before shutoff off and get shut off anyway. They won’t have to face the fact that their children and grandchildren will never attend college. And they won’t suffer the constant grinding down of their self-esteem until it is finally gone.

Most Americans can’t imagine what it’s like to make less than a living wage. The working poor are invisible to them.

Pen and ink master Gene Matras

2009-03-25T23:36:00.009-04:00

Gene Matras’ pen and ink drawings have been winning awards for more than twenty years.

Gene has no formal training. As a child, he loved to draw country scenes of rural Poland. He lived in the tiny town of Dobre, until his family emigrated to Manchester, New Hampshire in 1960.

Because he also liked to tinker with things, Gene attended vocational school in Manchester and planned to be a welder. A perceptive instructor encouraged him to forget welding and pursue a career in art after seeing some of Gene’s drawings.

He started working in pencil and eventually switched to pen and ink. Gene says he initially resisted pen and ink because it was so hard edged. After much hard work, he learned how to produce the soft tones in pen and ink that he could get with pencil.

As an artist and former technical illustrator, I can attest to the amount of work that goes into pen and ink renderings of this caliber. But it’s Gene’s superb draftsmanship and compositions that really make his work stand out.

It took years to build a following and a body of work that would support him, but Gene kept at it. He began publishing offset lithographic prints in limited editions, hand signing and numbering each one.

Gene is finally a self-sufficient artist. He admits that it has often been a struggle, but you get the feeling he has no regrets.

He lives with his wife and five children on their homestead in Pittsfield, New Hampshire where they enjoy keeping animals and gardening. Most of his work is based on old-time farm life and the trees, mountains and wildlife of New England.

Take a look at Gene’s wonderful artwork on his website at http://www.genematras.com and then call him at 603-435-8214 to place an order.

Gene’s work is available framed or unframed. I can testify from personal experience that his service is excellent and his prints make much appreciated gifts. Click on the images to see the exquisite detail.

Mesopotamian Mess

2009-03-23T10:13:00.002-04:00

As if we needed additional proof that war has no morality beyond self-justified destruction of everything in its path, I recently learned that part of the archaeological site of the ancient city of Babylon was commandeered to build a fuel supply depot for American military helicopters.

According to a report commissioned by the British Museum, U.S. troops built embankments, dug ditches and spread gravel to hold the fuel reservoirs needed to supply the helicopters. Fragments of 8000 year-old bricks engraved with cuneiform characters lie mixed with the rubble and sandbags left by the US military. 6th Century BC brick roadways, gates and monuments have been shattered.

Not only have irreplaceable ruins at a site that is one of the cradles of world civilization been permanently damaged by unregulated construction, vandalism, earth removal and filling with imported gravel; but the site has also been contaminated by spilled fuel seeping into the archaeological ruins.

We have destroyed an 8000 year-old archaelogical site to help carry out an illegal, imperialistic, unprovoked war in Iraq.

Does it matter to anyone?

A Country of Laws Revisited

2009-03-23T10:08:00.002-04:00

In an earlier post, I stated that the United States is a country of laws. The events of the last year suggest this is no longer true.

When the President and Vice-President of the United States can decide they are above the law, when financial industry executives can be financially rewarded for playing fast and loose with the law, when powerful corporate interests can change the law to reduce their taxes and increase their profits, when oil and coal companies can ignore environmental laws or get Congress to build in loopholes, and when big companies can peddle everything from drugs to toys that are not safe, this is not a country of laws.

Deregulation and emasculation of corporate law have made the United States only selectively a country of laws. The citizenry is still required to live and work by the laws, but those special interests with money and access to government through campaign funds and lobbyists are not.

The citizens of the United States are victims of a strategic campaign by big business and big money. We were conned into believing that deregulation is good for everyone when it only benefits those being deregulated. We were tricked into thinking that wealth somehow trickles down from the top when it only makes the rich richer. We were deceived into supporting an illegal war against terrorism, when all it accomplished is to feed the greed of government contractors and gain eventual control of Iraq’s oil supplies. The laws were changed over the last thirty years to make all of this possible.

These pirates have raped and pillaged our government, our retirement accounts and our home equity. They’ll walk away from this economic crisis with big homes, big bank accounts and big inheritances for their grandchildren. We’ll crawl away with bigger mortgages, higher taxes and nothing for our grandchildren except debt.

Justice is optional in a country of laws, when the laws are selective.

Flat world job hunting

2009-03-17T00:35:00.001-04:00

In the flattened, web-based world of the 21st Century, our children and grandchildren will compete for the best jobs with young people from India, China, Germany and Brazil.

They’ll no longer compete only with people from their own culture for high-paying jobs. They’ll compete with a larger pool of applicants with great skills and experiences.

It may be a lot like the high school basketball star who goes off to college only to find that he/she can’t even make the varsity team.

Our kids are counting on us to give them the education and training they need to compete. We can’t short-change them.

Eagles

2009-03-17T00:19:00.006-04:00

We have a pair of bald eagles that nest up on the mountainside behind the village of Monroe. They soar over the lakes formed by the hydro-electric dams on the Connecticut River looking for fish or small animals. I always hope to see one swoop down to catch a fish, but I haven’t yet.

One day last summer, one passed right over the car no more than a hundred feet above me. I felt a shiver as I watched it through the open sunroof.

Eagles are huge, majestic birds that are experts at riding air currents for hours on end. They seem to know right where to find the thermal updrafts and use them to gain altitude to save precious energy during long hunts for food. If it’s a bright sunny day, their white head and tail feathers turn shockingly bright when the sun catches them just right.

The river ice thawed during this week’s warm spell, leaving most of the river open water. I was surprised to see three eagles soaring over the river. I wondered if one was a young bird that has yet to leave the nest.

A Country of Laws

2009-03-17T00:16:00.000-04:00

The United States is a country of laws. People who break the law must be prosecuted.

While it will be a distraction from the work ahead of us, it’s critical to uphold the law. A thorough and impartial investigation of the Bush Administration's actions is in the best interest of the country and preserves the integrity of the US Constitution.

The victims of the Bush Administration's decisions deserve justice. Illegally slain US soldiers, wounded American veterans, dead Iraqi civilians, tortured prisoners, wiretapped American citizens and neglected Hurricane Katrina victims all deserve their day in court.

Justice is not optional in a country of laws. It’s mandatory.

Big Alice

2009-03-16T22:11:00.005-04:00

In 1969, I bought a 1948 Buick Special 4-door sedan from my friend, Malcolm Lee. He bought the car a few weeks earlier from the original owners, an elderly couple from Acton, Massachusetts.

We christened her Big Alice. In spite of having clocked almost a hundred thousand miles, she was in remarkably good condition. Her dark green paint glistened. Her wide whitewall tires gleamed. And her abundant chrome trim sparkled.

The dinner-plate-sized fog lamps mounted on her front bumper were impressive. Her pin-striped horsehair seats were high and comfortable. Her massive chrome radio dial and speaker grill were flanked by an elegant instrument panel. Big Alice was a regal ride.

In addition to getting me back and forth to work every day, Big Alice carried our young family in style to weddings and other family events. She offered just the right combination of elegance and non-conformity.

My wife and I were driving home from visiting her parents one night, when a New Hampshire State Trooper stopped us. The inquisitive young officer shined his flashlight in the window at me, then at my wife and finally at our two young children sleeping on the back seat.

“Can I see your license and registration?” he barked. It was more a command than a question.

I handed him the two documents. He carefully studied them with his flashlight.

“Who’s the woman in the passenger seat,” he asked.

“My wife.”

“Where are you going?”

“We’re just heading home to Lincoln, Massachusetts after visiting my wife’s parents up in Hollis.”

“Stay in the car please,” he ordered.

He walked back to his cruiser and got inside. I was concerned that the flashing blue lights would wake the kids, but they slept though it all.

After what seemed like an hour, the trooper walked back up beside the driver’s door and handed me the license and registration.

“Sorry about the wait. I thought you were someone else,” he growled. Then he turned and walked back to his car again.

I put Big Alice in gear and pulled away.

Several months later, I was unable to get an inspection sticker due to worn kingpins in the front end. I couldn’t find replacement parts and had no place to store her, so I put Big Alice up for sale. A young man about my age bought her.

I was driving along Route 2 in Concord just west of the Prison rotary about a year later, when I saw her pulled off onto the shoulder. I pulled up behind to take a look.

She was like an old girlfriend who had seen hard times since we last dated. Her smooth finish had been repainted a darker shade of green, but it was full of runs and dust. One of her fog lamps was broken. Her once immaculate cloth upholstery was torn and stained, and her floors were littered with trash. I hoped it might be a different car, but the hand-painted Alice’s Restaurant sign that adorned the small passenger side back window was still there.

I climbed back into my car and drove away, watching her get smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror.

I still wonder if there was another dark green 1948 Buick carrying a carload of criminals around southern New Hampshire that night.

Snowmobiles

2009-02-28T03:43:00.004-05:00

Snowmobiling is big business in Northern New England. Really big business.

A 2004 study by Plymouth (New Hampshire) State University and the Institute for New Hampshire Studies suggests just how big.

In the winter of 2003, the total impact on New Hampshire's economy by snowmobilers was nearly $1.2 billion. It represented 1% of the gross state product and more than 10% of all travel spending in the state.

The average New Hampshire resident snowmobiler made 12 trips per season, some of which included overnight stays. The average non-resident snowmobiler made nine trips to New Hampshire each season.

Average per-person, per-day spending in New Hampshire was $67.07 per resident snowmobiler and $88.30 per non-resident. In addition to spending on their trips, each snowmobiler spends $1,830 annually on equipment, clothing, club memberships, insurance and state license fees.

I like motor vehicles. I like the excitement of going fast, and a fast snowmobile provides plenty of excitement. Racing at 90 mph across a snow-covered pond on a snowmobile generates a 200 mph adreneline rush.

Snowmobiles are a lot of fun, and they provide transportation for people living in far northern climes. They also provide a livelihood for many people.

All that being said, snowmobiles are one of the most environmentally unfriendly devices invented by man. Riding a gas guzzling, pollution spewing, motor vehicle into the woods for entertainment is an environmental felony.

All winter, I see caravans of giant 4-wheel drive pickups and SUVs dragging huge trailers full of snow machines up and down the interstate at 70-80 mph. These 10-mpg rigs burn large amounts of fuel and leave behind a wake of hydrocarbon haze. When they reach their destination, they disgorge packs of 10-mpg snow machines which race through the woods burning large amounts of fuel and leaving behind wakes of hydrocarbon haze.

Snowmobiling has become such big business that we justify the felony by saying that it’s vital to the economy. How about looking at the real cost?

Snowmobiles consume an unacceptable amount of precious fossil fuel and pump an unacceptable amount of pollution into our precious atmosphere for the entertainment of a few people.

When does entertainment become too costly?

Six Word Stories

2009-02-28T03:36:00.002-05:00

Here’s a game my son, Brian, recommended to me. The object is to write a story using only six words. It’s one of those addictive little games that sharpens your writing skills. I’ve included a few of mine. Send me some of yours!

Engagement ring for sale. Never worn.

She’s pregnant. I’m not the father.

The flashbacks continued his whole life.

The planet exploded after they left.

The tower collapsed on my family.

He didn’t remove one incriminating fingerprint.

The twelfth statue ended up missing.

The water receded. I found her.

Robin Kent & Jim Barner – Artisans at the Bend

2009-02-28T03:13:00.005-05:00

Some artists see the world very seriously. Others take their work very seriously. Robin Kent and Jim Barner don’t seem to do either. You get the feeling they’re just having fun.

They create some of the most compelling sculptures and paintings you'll encounter. Their work is visually stunning, clever and artful. And it proves that serious art doesn’t have to be serious.

Each piece is carefully conceived and thoughtfully executed, but you don’t notice that. Instead you think how much fun it would be to have in your living room when friends come over.

Robin and Jim hail from Brandon, Vermont, but their work is featured in galleries around the country. They also exhibit every November at the prestigious Vermont Hand Crafters Fine Art & Craft Show in Burlington, Vermont.

You can see more of their terrific work at: www.artisansatthebend.com.

Last man standing

2009-02-28T02:56:00.011-05:00

Here’s what I see as the basic flaw in our War on Terror. We’re not fighting an army. We’re fighting people.

We call them terrorists; but they’re people who passionately believe we’re greedy, imperialist murderers who want to occupy their lands and plunder their resources. And we’ve played right into that belief.

From their perspective, the United States helped the Jews invade the Holy Land after World War II and has since provided Israel with aid and weapons of mass destruction that resulted in tens of thousands of Muslim deaths over the last fifty years.

In 1953, we sponsored a coup in Iran because their Prime Minister Mosaddeeq wanted to nationalize Iran’s British-owned oil company, and we didn’t want to lose control of Iran’s oil supply. We reinstated the Shah, a repressive dictator who had been overthrown by a Muslim revolution.

Over the next two and a half decades, we supported the Shah and his shockingly opulent lifestyle against the wishes of a starving Iranian people. He was ousted again in 1978, and the United States welcomed him here as a friend.

A few hundred outraged Muslim students retaliated in 1979 by taking over the US embassy in Iran and holding American diplomats hostage. The Reagan Administration negotiated a clandestine deal for the release of the hostages in return for US-held Iranian assets and immunity from all charges.

When war broke out between Iran and Iraq, the United States supplied weapons to Iran including a secret arms-for-hostage deal involving the Israelis. Most neighboring countries supported Iraq. Estimates of deaths from that war run as high as 1.5 million.

In 1990, the Bush Administration practically goaded the ruthless Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait. This provided the US with a reason to invade Iraq and gain control of Iraqi oil fields. In a bombing campaign of historically unprecedented proportions, US armed forces destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure and killed as many as a hundred thousand civilians.

A small number of Muslim extremists again retaliated by bombing New York’s World Trade Center in 1993 and by finally destroying it in 2001. The United States responded by invading Afghanistan and then Iraq. We indiscriminately killed, captured and tortured people as part of our War on Terror. The Bush Administration did it’s best to hide the number of civilian casualties, but international groups report that deaths exceed twenty thousand in Afghanistan and more than a half million in Iraq over the last seven years. And who knows how many maimed and crippled.

Is it any wonder these people believe we're evil? Each time we kill one of them, we confirm their beliefs. Each family member we kill turns the rest of that family against us. Each man we torture ignites hatred among his brothers, cousins and neighbors. We may not share their beliefs, but we damned well better figure out a better way to deal with them.

We’ve been dragged into an endless war – a war than can only end with the last man standing.

It’s time to stop.

160 MPH

2009-02-27T00:24:00.010-05:00

One beautiful summer morning a little over forty years ago, I was driving out of Boston on Route 2 to work at my very first job after art school. I was poking along in the slow lane in a decrepit old Volvo 445 Duette.

Suddenly, a sleek white Jaguar 3.8 Mark II sedan with a bright red accent stripe under the windows sped by in the fast lane. As it passed, I was treated to that lovely deep vibrato exhaust note distinctive to six-cylinder Jaguars.

When I arrived at work, the Jag was sitting in the parking lot, and a tall, lanky young man was walking away from it toward the building.

I don’t remember which one of us first struck up a conversation, but Malcolm Lee and I became friends. It was the beginning of a long series of automotive adventures and a friendship that lasts to this day.

Soon after we met, Malcolm replaced the Jaguar sedan with a gorgeous XKE coupe. It was the early model with the 3.8-liter engine, real knock-off wire wheels and covered headlamps, a car that I still believe is one of the most beautiful automobiles of all time.

Malcolm was as anxious to show off his new car as I was to see it; so he came by my house to take me for a ride. We took the back way up to Nashua, New Hampshire, reveling in the way the car handled the winding roads. We stopped for a cup of coffee and then headed home, taking the highway this time.

As we drove down Route 3, I looked over at the big round speedometer. The numbers went up to 160 miles per hour.

“Will it go that fast?”

Malcom looked at me and grinned. “There’s only one way to find out.”

The final section of the highway connecting Nashua and Chelmsford had just been completed. When we reached the smooth new pavement, Malcolm pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The sleek coupe effortlessly accelerated.

I watched the speedometer needle climb to 80, 100, 130 and then 150, my adrenaline level climbing with it.

The road was coming at us faster than I could ever have imagined, but the car tracked straight and steady.

I glanced over at the speedometer again. The needle pointed to just under 160 miles per hour.

We passed a couple of cars that were probably going sixty, but they were barely moving. They were traveling a hundred miles per hour slower than we were.

When we reached the end of the new road, Malcolm slowed down to a crawl. I checked the speedometer. We were still going eighty-five.

We both burst out laughing. It was the first of many such laughs.

Our great-grandchildren are watching

2009-02-27T00:18:00.004-05:00

In his 2007 Nobel Peace prize lecture, Al Gore posed the following question about global warming:

“The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask, ‘What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?’ Or they will ask instead, ‘How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?’ ”

What should I tell my great-granddaughter?

Emergency Room

2009-02-21T23:36:00.006-05:00

A man died at the end of the eleven-to-seven shift in the emergency room at UMass Memorial Medical Center last week. He was hit by a car while jogging at twilight and then life-flighted there, the largest emergency medical facility in central Massachusetts.

After a mostly sleepless night at my daughter’s bedside in the ER, I went to the coffee shop around six-thirty. I returned to find a scene of controlled panic as doctors, nurses and technicians struggled to keep the new patient alive. His cubicle across from my daughter’s bed was crowded with people and machines—all there in a valiant attempt to save him. But in the end, they couldn't.

I watched the doctors and nurses disperse, peeling off blood-spattered face masks, gloves and smocks. They acted serene and detached, as they must; but the lack of emotion was surreal. In the outside world, we react to death with so much emotion.

A nurse in bright flowered scrubs who had just walked in to start her shift whispered to her cohort, “That’s a lousy way to start the day.”

The clean-up staff began their grisly task. Four large cardboard cartons marked BIOHAZARD were set up in the hallway and lined with special plastic bags. Bloodstained linens, dressings and medical paraphernalia were tossed into them. It seemed like everything in the small room was being dumped into those boxes. I was struck by how much blood there was.

Several nurses continued working inside the room. I couldn’t see, but I supposed they were cleaning up the body.

The cleaning crew wiped down the electronic instruments and tossed the wipes into the boxes. When they finished, the boxes were sealed up, stacked on a dolly and wheeled out. Finally, the crew washed the floor in the room and the hall.

When everything was finished, the deceased patient lay in the room awaiting his family. Every couple of minutes, a nurse or technician would come by, look into the room and then turn away. I guess there's still a morbid curiosity about the dead even among medical professionals.

One nurse in particular—a middle-eastern man with a black close-cropped beard—seemed very emotionally involved. I guessed he was the nurse assigned to the patient.

Even though his shift was over, he kept coming back to the room. He moved things around. He wiped down a shelf by the door. He arranged the furniture.

It was clear he was having a difficult time letting go of this patient. I wondered if he wanted to make everything right for himself, the patient or the soon-to-arrive family.

He put on his jacket, threw his backpack over his shoulder and started to leave. As he walked by the room, he looked in. Then he took off his backpack and jacket and put them on the nurse station counter.

He opened a package of moistened wipes and went into the room again. A few seconds later, he emerged. He took one last long look, put on his jacket and picked up his backpack.

I watched him walk down the long corridor, the death weighing heavily on his shoulders.

My daughter still slept, so I walked back out to the waiting room. Outside the large windows, a construction crew was already at work backfilling around the foundation for a new addition. They were oblivious to the drama that had just taken place inside.

A small yellow backhoe danced a mechanical ballet as it dug into the pile of fill, turned and then dumped. Over and over again.

It's official. Judd Gregg is a wimp.

2009-02-13T17:52:00.004-05:00

This week, New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg decided that it would be better for him to continue being a Republican obstructionist in the Senate rather than help the President move the United States out of this historic economic crisis. By turning down his President’s request to serve as Secretary of Commerce, Gregg chose partisan politics over progress.

“It has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me,” Mr. Gregg said, “as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the census, there are irresolvable conflicts for me.”

What a wimp! He’s not able to put aside personal politics to serve his country. He doesn’t believe enough in his own ideas to work for them in a bi-partisan administration.

He shouldn’t wait for 2010 to step down. He’s an embarrassment to those of us in New Hampshire who believe in real public service.

It's our war too.

2009-02-09T01:16:00.005-05:00

All Americans share responsibility for the actions of our government. We elect the officials and either support or condemn their actions.

We let George Bush and his neo-con cronies start an unprovoked war in Iraq. We stayed quiet even after we knew the rationale for war was a lie. We saw the videos of Abu-Ghraib. We didn’t demand our Senators and Congressmen stop the violence and abuse. We sat comfortably in our living rooms in front of the TV clicking our tongues over the awful things our government was doing as if it was out of our hands.

If our soldiers and mercenaries murdered innocent Iraqi civilians, they must be held accountable. If our military and intelligence personnel tortured and abused prisoners, they must be prosecuted. If the Bush Administration broke the law, they must face the consequences. We can’t pretend these things didn’t happen and blithely continue on with the rest of our lives. We let them happen.

So we must accept the responsibility for all the brave young men and women who were sent on a fool’s errand and returned home broken. We have an obligation to help make our veterans whole and return them emotionally intact to civilian life. We owe them that.

We allowed them to be sent to war.

Public Retirement Insurance

2009-02-08T01:48:00.005-05:00

Here’s my idea for public retirement insurance:

For about $600 retail and hopefully even less in quantity, the government could issue every citizen who turns sixty-five a Model 637 Smith & Wesson revolver and one bullet. When a retiree decides there’s no more point in living, he or she could blow their brains out.

For less than one month’s retirement check, we could save years of social security payments to tired old folks who have nothing to live for. They would die with the satisfaction of knowing they saved their country money by ending their miserable lives. And there would be more money left for well-adjusted oldsters.

The Social Security deficit would disappear and politicians could again begin dipping into it for pet projects. Smith & Wesson would become so profitable that it could offer deep discounts to law enforcement departments. And it would create new jobs to help the floundering economy.

As retirees died, their handguns would be turned in so the government could recycle them to new retirees and generate even greater savings.

It could be the solution to our social security shortfall.

Model 637
1-7/8" Revolver

Specifications
SKU: 163050
Caliber: .38 S&W Special +P
Capacity: 5 Rounds
Barrel Length: 1-7/8"
Front Sight: Serrated Ramp
Rear Sight: Fixed Notch
Firing System: N/A
Grip: Uncle Mike's Boot
Trigger: .312" Smooth Target
Hammer: .240" Semi-Target
External Safety: N/A
Frame: Small - J Frame Rd
Finish: Glassbead
Overall length: 6-5/16"
Material: Aluminum Alloy / Stainless Steel
Weight Empty: 15 ounces

$600.00*
*Suggested Retail, Dealer Sets Actual Pricing.

(photo and specs courtesy of the Smith & Wesson web site )

Barry Van Dusen

2009-02-08T00:57:00.011-05:00

I’ve known Barry Van Dusen for many years. He created wonderful illustrations for my ad agency’s clients back in the 1980s. In addition to his significant talent, what always impressed me about Barry is his unswerving dedication to his work. He is a consummate artist.

Barry is having an exhibition of his recent work at Mass Audubon's Joppa Flats Education Center in Newburyport, Massachusetts from February 22 to April 5, 2009.

Ttiled At the Water's Edge, the exhibit will feature more than 35 paintings in both oil and watercolor, many on display for the first time. Coastal subjects from various regions of New England will be represented, along with subjects from Barry's rambles around the swamps, rivers, ponds and lakes near his home in central Massachusetts.

Wrackline Wraith

Barry will host a meet-the-artist event on Sunday, March 1, from 2-4 pm. If you want to meet a very talented artist and see some beautiful work, do yourself a favor and attend.

The artwork will be for sale with a portion of proceeds to benefit the programs of the Joppa Flats Education Center. The Center is open 8:30 am to 4 pm, Tuesdays through Sundays (and Monday Holidays). For more information and directions, visit www.massaudubon.org or call 978-462-9998.

If you want to see more of Barry’s work, visit his website at www.barryvandusen.com. You can also visit his studio in Princeton, Massachusetts where he displays a wide selection of original works.

Loafing Godwits

Bluebird and Crabapples

Aging

2009-02-08T00:42:00.002-05:00

It's easy to age gracefully when your life is full of grand accomplishments. We all admire Katherine Hepburn, Jimmy Carter and Mother Theresa.

But who admires a retired auto body repairman with a persistant cough, a divorced wife and an estranged son.

It’s difficult to be old and graceful when your life is full of clumsy mistakes.

31° Below Zero

2009-02-06T17:23:00.013-05:00

It was 31° below zero the other morning when I drove up to St. Johnsbury.

The storm door on the back porch opened hard. When I stepped off the porch, it sounded like I was walking on Styrofoam. The hinges creaked as I pulled open the car door, and the icy cold leather seat stung the back of my thighs as I slid inside. The engine turned over like it was filled with molasses, but at least it started.

Every little imperfection in the frozen road surface was telegraphed up through the car’s unyielding suspension into my now frozen buttocks as I drove down the hill and over the bridge across the Connecticut River. When the needle on the temperature gauge finally started to move, I switched on the fan. It squealed in protest.

As the inside of the car warmed, I thought back to another time I’d been out in such fiercely cold weather.

On New Year’s Day 1993, my wife and I drove up across the border into Quebec to take pictures. It was a bright clear morning when we left a friend’s house in northern Vermont. The temperature was –15°.

I got some beautiful shots on the back road up to Sherbrooke, but by noon a good snowstorm had blown in. We weren’t far from a picturesque round barn in Barnston that I had photographed the previous summer, so I decided to take some shots of it in the wintry weather before we turned back. I wasn’t concerned about getting stuck because my trusty old Volvo wagon wore four Gislived snow tires.

It was snowing harder, and the wind was howling when we reached the barn. I pulled into a plowed driveway and put on my hat, gloves and long wool stadium coat. Then I gathered up my camera and tripod and headed out into the field beside the barn.

I’ve never taken photos under such adverse conditions. The wind sucked the heat away from my body in spite of numerous layers of warm clothing.

I set up my tripod and snapped a few pictures. On the third shot the shutter froze. After coming that far in that weather, I didn’t want to go home empty-handed; so I took the camera off the tripod and stuffed it inside my coat.

After several minutes, I pulled out the camera and snapped a few more shots. I repeated this process several times until I was sure I had a good picture. By then, I was really feeling the cold.

When I turned to head back to the car, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t find my tracks in the snow. I was caught in a whiteout in the middle of a large field with the temperature well below zero. After a moment of vertigo, I set off in the general direction of the car. With nothing to guide me, I couldn’t tell if I was even going in a straight line.

I strained to see some landmark.

Nothing.

Finally, I spotted a phone pole. I worked my way toward it and climbed over the snowbank into the road. I could see the faint outline of the house where the car was parked and headed in that direction.

The warmth of the car was sublime. I peeled off my coat, hat and gloves and held my frozen fingers against the heater grilles as the car rocked with each gust of wind. My wife looked up from her book and asked me how it went. I told her she didn’t want to know.

Looking at the photograph still makes me cold.

Andrew Wyeth

2009-02-06T16:56:00.005-05:00

My favorite artist, Andrew Wyeth, died. I’ve loved his work since I first attended art school. He was the artist that inspired me.

Wyeth was the subject of much controversy. Critics often dismissed him as a self-absorbed sentimentalist – more commercial illustrator than artist. The media indulged their tabloid tendencies by exploiting his Helga paintings. Dealers promoted his work because it was immensely profitable to do so. But Andrew Wyeth had a huge audience of people who admired his work.

I never met Wyeth. I attended his shows at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Currier Gallery in Manchester, New Hampshire. I made pilgrimages to the Brandywine Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the Olson farm in Cushing, Maine. I own several books that chronicle his work.

To me, Andrew Wyeth was one of the most accomplished painters of modern times.

As an aspiring artist, I find his drawing skills and mastery of the dry-brush tempera medium are unmatched. As an experienced graphic designer, I admire the masterful subtlty of his compositions. As a person who has also struggled with depression, I relate to the somber beauty of his paintings.

But the ultimate value of art is how well it communicates with you. Whether it reaches out and draws you in. Whether it touches your soul. Andrew Wyeth’s work does all three for me.

These are a few of my favorite Wyeth paintings. If you click on the images, you can see them larger.

Trodden Weed

Master Bedroom

Adam

Toll Rope

Granddaughter

Northern Point

Garret Room

Pennsylvania Landscape

Day Dream

Inauguration Day 2009

2009-01-20T23:37:00.003-05:00

What a wonderful day!

I was genuinely moved as I watched the Presidential Inauguration. I felt proud to have a President who is smart, articulate, compassionate and charismatic. I felt lucky to see our first African American president take office. I felt pleased to see the obvious affection between he and his lovely wife. And I felt joyful to see their two beautiful daughters.

For so many years I have either disliked or simply tolerated our presidents. Finally a president I like--a president I believe can restore our dignity as Americans.

What a truly wonderful day!

On the Connecticut

2009-01-09T00:39:00.034-05:00

In case you haven’t already guessed, we live right on the Connecticut River. The town of Monroe, New Hampshire sits on a sandy bluff overlooking the river about fifty miles north of Hanover. We live in the center of town, but we can’t quite see the river from our front porch due to the steep embankment that leads down to the water’s edge.

Our house in 1936

We do, however, have a nice view of Vermont. A dear old friend who lived across the river some years back used to proudly say that the folks over on this side were lucky because they got to look at Vermont. I tend to agree with her.

In 1762, New Hampshire Colonial Governor John Wentworth issued grants to 64 persons in what are now the towns of Monroe and Lyman. They were obligated to clear, farm and settle one tenth of each of their parcels or forfeit their grants. Only two even made the attempt.

One of them was Colonel John Hurd of Portsmouth. He was granted a parcel of land that included the riverbank and five small islands. It was named Hurd’s Location.

The first known settler was John Hyndman, who built a log cabin and settled with his wife and son on the largest of the islands in 1784. He was followed by Joseph, Timothy and Israel Olmstead along with their wives and children.

Twenty-three of the parcels were combined with Hurd’s grant to become West Lyman. In 1854, it was incorporated as a separate town and renamed Monroe after the fifth president.

There once were two long covered bridges that connected Monroe with the town of Barnet, Vermont, which is right across the river from us.

The lower or Lyman Bridge connected Monroe Center with McIndoe Falls, the biggest of Barnet’s five villages. It was the third bridge on this site. More than 300 feet long, it was built as a toll bridge in 1833 by Peter Paddleford, a Monroe resident and inventor of the Paddleford Covered Bridge Truss.

The Lyman covered bridge

After 96 years of continuous use, the bridge was still in good condition when it was dismantled in 1930 and sold to Julius Long for a barn. It was replaced with an arched, steel truss bridge.

The upper or Beard’s Falls bridge was the fifth bridge on that site. The first four were lost to weather or flood.

It was a 220-foot Town lattice with arch structure and built as a toll bridge by Phillip Henry Paddleford of Monroe in 1877. It was condemned and replaced by the current steel truss bridge in 1938.

The Beard’s Falls covered bridge

The Beard’s Falls bridge toll gate

The completion of the Connecticut and Passumpsic Railway line in 1850 connected Monroe and MacIndoe Falls with the outside world. It also opened urban markets to area businesses.

McIndoe Falls was named for the natural falls that stretched across the river between Barnet and Monroe. They provided water power for a large sawmill on the Vermont side and a large grist mill on the New Hampshire side. Both are long gone.

McIndoe Falls from Monroe near the beginning of the 20th Century. The sawmill is on the left of the falls and the gristmill on the right.

Built in about 1875, George VanDyke's sawmill was the largest lumber mill in northern Vermont. It employed more than 100 men and manufactured about 15,000,000 feet of lumber per year.

H.P. Hood and Sons, a Boston Milk company, ran a huge icehouse in McIndoe Falls in the early 20th Century. Every winter in January or February, depending on weather, the river ice was cut into large blocks for shipping to Boston to refrigerate the Hood plant.

Over in Monroe, Charles McFarland's gristmill, built around 1840, had five runs of millstones and handled about fifty car-loads of western grain per year. Eber A. Willey's butter-tub factory, built in 1884, ran on steam-power and had the capacity for manufacturing 10,000 butter-tubs per year.

McIndoe Falls some time before 1930.

Between 1928 and 1930, a dam and hydro-electric generating station were built on McIndoe Falls. It currently generates about 11 MW of electricity. We can hear the roar of rushing water inside our house when they open the gates to lower the water level.

The new hydro-electric dam and steel truss bridge in the 1930s.

Things up here don’t look all that much different than they did when the above photo was taken. The biggest change is the hillsides are now heavily forested. The upper valley’s hillside pastures are rapidly filling in. Our lovely views are disappearing.

Our Bully Child

2009-01-08T13:54:00.004-05:00

We helped raise a bully child in the Middle East.

Israel has the right and duty to protect its citizens against terrorism and aggression from its neighbors; but the level of their retaliation is way out of proportion to attacks by the Palestinians. Hamas has killed 14 Israelis in the last two weeks. Israel has killed 900 Palestinians.

Like a child who beats up his smaller playmates when things don’t go his way, we’ve allowed Israel to get away with being the neighborhood bully in the Middle East for half a century. We’ve condoned their hyper-aggressive military tactics, supplied them with sophisticated weapons of mass destruction and given them aid.

It’s like sending a spoiled child who was hit with a stick back out into the yard with a bazooka.

In addition to adopting our weapons, Israel has adopted our arrogant, xenophobic attitude in dealing with its enemies. They don’t put the same value on the lives of Palestinian children as they do on Israeli children.

To the Israelis, Palestinian civilians are nothing more than expendable pawns. They’re employing civilian carnage to coerce Hamas into submission. Using the excuse that Hamas militants deliberately hide among civilian populations, Israel has taken license to bomb civilian targets, blockade food and medical supplies to wounded civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure.

They saw how we used the ends to justify illegal military means in Iraq. Like a child who learns from his parents’ actions, Israel is simply copying us.

Is this where we tell them do as I say, not as I do?

Collective Amnesia

2009-01-06T13:46:00.005-05:00

As George Bush staggers through the final days of his failed administration, we all seem to be suffering from collective amnesia. Or maybe it’s collective fatigue.

We seem content to let him slink off into the sunset, relieved that he'll finally be gone. There seems to be little interest in holding him accountable for the horrible damage he’s done to our country.

In our post-election euphoria, we seem to have forgotten that he and his administration:

turned a sizeable budget surplus into an unprecedented deficit
rammed though tax cuts for their wealthy cronies at the expense of the low and middle class
dismantled the last remnants of a regulatory system designed to protect the economy
deceived us into an illegal and imperialistic war that resulted in the death of more than 4000 brave American soldiers and the maiming of thousands more plus the death of several hundred thousand Iraqis
wasted a trillion dollars on the war, much of it going to corrupt military contractors and Iraqi officials
violated the Geneva Conventions by torturing war prisoners
ruined our hard-won reputation for fairness and decency in the international community
took away our Constitutionally-granted civil liberties
left thousands of American citizens stranded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and
jammed through a $700 billion financial bailout package on his way out the door that benefits the greedy investment industry that helped create the current economic disaster

The Bush Administration’s stock-in-trade was lies and deception. Its policies led us from one catastrophe into another. Its remedies consisted of one broken promise after another.

George Bush and Company are criminals that have violated U.S. and international laws with impunity. Even as they sleaze out of Washington, they continue to spin their lies into a web of historic distortion.

Yet no one seems to have the stomach to take these miscreants to task for their crimes.

Why?

Profile of a silhouette artist

2009-01-03T01:49:00.010-05:00

I think we’ve all gone on line and Googled our own name just to see what comes up. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered silhouette artist Karl Johnson.

Once a popular art form, silhouette cutting is rare these days. According to his website, Karl has been practicing since he was ten years old. He learned from his father, who was taught many years earlier by a long-time family friend.

Karl cuts every silhouette entirely freehand. He looks at the subject's profile and then cuts their likeness out of black paper. Each silhouette is an original, one-of-a-kind work of art. Karl has cut thousands of silhouette images.

Karl attributes his success, in part, to having vision in only one eye. Not having binocular vision forces him to judge the distance and shape of an object by examining its shadow. This gives him an uncanny ability to capture an image in silhouette.

Karl's studio is in Los Angeles. You can see and buy his unique works of art on his website at http://www.cutarts.com/index.php

What the Second Amendment means to me

2009-01-02T13:38:00.001-05:00

Last year’s Supreme Court decision that the Second Amendment included people’s rights to own firearms for personal protection elevated the rhetoric on both sides of the issue.

Over the last eight years of the Bush Administration, I came to see the Second Amendment from a different perspective. I believe the founding fathers intended that we should be armed as part of a well-regulated militia to protect our rights against a government that might try to deny them like the King of England had.

These men had just put everything on the line to stand up to a government that imposed taxes on the middle class to support the extravagant lifestyle of the rich without any representation by that middle class – a government that stifled individual freedoms and small businesses and used the military to control the public's right to dissent. They were driven to an armed revolt against a rich imperialist monarch who cared only about making himself and his cronies richer.

I believe that’s why they included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. It had little to do with hunting, sport shooting or self-defense. It was primarily about protecting democracy from tyrannical leaders.

Tyrants count on the citizenry being complacent and obedient. They can’t risk things getting out of hand. And that risk is precisely why we need a strong Second Amendment – to make sure that our leaders have second thoughts about taking away our rights.

That said, there’s a simple reason to insist that all those guns be registered. It puts the ultimate responsibility for every firearm in the hands of its owner. If a gun is misused or improperly safeguarded, its registered owner should be held accountable. No excuses. No second chance. Just heavy fines and possible jail time.

With every right comes a responsibility.

Old Picard

2009-01-02T12:55:00.006-05:00

There was a hermit known as Old Picard in our town when I was young. He lived in a ramshackle house on Proctor Hill that was nearly hidden behind piles of scrap lumber, cordwood, rusted metal odds and ends, broken tools and rabbit cages.

When you drove by in the summer, you’d see him working in a small garden next to the house or sitting on the porch in a broken-down old rocking chair. Everything was weathered gray, including Old Picard.

Adelard Picard was a French-Canadian lumberjack and stonemason. It was said that he could hand cut and stack three cords of wood a day in his prime. Now he was a gnarled and sinewy old man with a severe stoop, stringy gray hair and ragged clothing.

My grandfather was an attorney who had taken up woodcutting and farming in his retirement. He took me with him several times to have Picard fashion a handle for an ax or an adze. I was a little afraid of the raggedy, wild-looking old man, but my grandfather said that Picard’s handles were made by hands that knew the swing of the tool.

Sometimes my grandfather paid in cash. Other times he bartered for tobacco or other goods.

The two old gentlemen enjoyed swapping stories. You had to listen closely when Picard talked in his hoarse, gravely voice because his accent was thick and his expressions archaic.

Every year on Thanksgiving afternoon, my grandfather drove over to Picard’s house to bring him dinner. And every year, my grandmother made a big fuss about taking her good china. It was an annual event in their ritual bickering.

Picard would be in the kitchen in a tattered old easy chair. The room contained an old iron cookstove, a battered blue and white enamel-topped table and a couple of rickety kitchen chairs. It was filled with piles of newspapers and firewood, and there were rabbits everywhere. The house reeked of cigarettes, wood smoke and rabbits. It didn’t dawn on me until I was older, that Picard probably ate those rabbits.

Picard transferred the food to one of his plates. The two men chatted for a few moments, and then we left.

Years later when I was in college, I worked summers at Silver Lake State Park. The park manager, Mark Dutton, was an obstinate old-timer who ran the place like clockwork for years.

One summer, we needed some anchors for a new swimming raft. We loaded two large flat rocks that Mark had been saving just for that purpose into the back of his pickup truck. He explained how the flat rocks would sink into the mud at the bottom of the lake where the suction would hold them fast.

“You know Old Picard?” he asked me.

“Sure. I used to go there with my grandfather.”

“Well, you take these stones over there and ask him to drill a hole for an eye bolt through each one.”

“Picard?”

Mark gestured to the curved, fieldstone stairway that led up into the picnic area. It was a work of art.

“You see those stairs over there. Picard built them single-handedly.”

As I drove away, I wondered how one old man could move all those heavy stones into place. Some of them weighed more than two hundred pounds.

Picard was sitting on the porch in his rocking chair when I pulled up in front of his house. It had been years since I visited with my grandfather. Picard was even more stooped and unkempt than I remembered.

He looked me over suspiciously, then got out of his chair and walked over to the truck.

“Hello,” I said as I climbed out of the truck.

“What do you do with the stone?” he growled, glancing into the pickup bed.

“Mark Dutton said to bring these over and have you drill a hole through each one for those eye bolts.”

Picard didn’t respond. He examined the rocks with his crooked fingers. He picked up the long, heavy eyebolts.

“I used to come here with my grandfather,” I said nervously.

“Who?”

“Sam Spence.”

Picard’s face cracked into a thousand wrinkles. “He was a good man.”

I offered him a cigarette.

“You smoke the same ones,” he chuckled as he pulled a big wooden match from his shirt pocket and struck it on his thumbnail. I recognized the shirt. It was one of my grandfather’s old wool shirts. His hand trembled as he lit the cigarette.

I followed Picard through the piles of junk into a decrepit shed. He muttered how everyone had stolen all his good hammers and drills. He found an old sledgehammer, a file and some star drills. Back at the truck, he quickly and expertly sharpened the drills and then climbed up into the back.

“You hold the drill here,” he instructed, pointing to a spot near the middle of the first stone.

His hands still trembled as he picked up the sledgehammer. I moved away, holding the drill at arms length.

“Get closer,” he barked. “I won’t hit you”

Picard swung that hammer again and again, never hitting the drill even slightly off center. His aged muscles may not have been as strong as they once were, but they were just as accurate.

“Once it would take me half as long,” he apologized when he finished the first hole.

We stopped for another smoke. Picard regaled me with stories about logging in 19th Century Quebec. He told how he started working in a logging camp kitchen when he was twelve and later worked as a lumberjack and stonemason.

He described a long-ago world in another time… long cold Canadian winters away from civilization for months on end, trees a man’s height through the middle taken down with hand tools, and strong teams of oxen pulling huge logs through the snow.

Picard was proud of his work and the rugged lifestyle, but he complained that it had left him old and bent.

Then, he abruptly showed me where to position the drill on the other rock. Like the first one, he didn’t miss a blow. He finished the second hole and inserted the eyebolts.

“How much for the drilling,” I asked.

“Four dollars.”

“You sure that’s enough?”

“Four dollars,” he repeated.

I gave him the four bucks.

There was an awkward silence.

“Thank you,” I said as I turned to go.

When I opened the door to the truck, I remembered the carton of Chesterfields Mark kept in the glove compartment. I reached in, took out the open carton and handed it to Picard.

“That’ll save you a trip to the store,” I said as I slammed the truck door.

Picard smiled. “Your grandfather, he was a good man.”

I never saw Picard again.

A year or so later when I was away at college, Picard’s house burned down. Some townspeople got together and rebuilt it for him, but he died soon after. There is no trace of the house now.

According to Social Security records, Adelard Picard was born in 1878 and died in 1968. That means he was about 85 when he drilled the holes through those rocks in 1963.

New Year’s Resolution

2009-01-02T12:44:00.001-05:00

For 2009, I’m making a resolution that I hope we all can share.
In the hope for real positive change in the coming year,
I pledge that I will try to better understand those who disagree
with my political, religious and philosophical points of view,
avoid dismissing their ideas without first listening to them,
and not use derogatory terms to diminish them and their beliefs.
I’ll try my best. Will you join me?

Holiday doorways

2008-12-23T14:13:00.023-05:00

I went for a drive after the snowstorm and took photos of some interesting doorways decorated for the holidays. They're like public greeting cards from the people inside.

Best wishes for the holidays and a prosperous New Year.

The admitted outlaw

2008-12-17T13:43:00.009-05:00

In his ABC interview this week, Vice President Cheney said that he knew the Iraq War was unprovoked and that he personally approved illegal interrogation techniques. He admitted on national television that he broke the law — not just petty misdemeanors, but serious international war crimes.

Is it just hubris that made him do it, or something more sinister? Could it be a calculated strategy to get it on the record so that President Bush will be forced to pardon him?

This man is a calculating, arrogant, fascist outlaw.

And I do use the word fascist correctly:

Fascist — someone who supports or advocates a system of government characterized by dictatorship, centralized control of private enterprise, repression of all opposition and extreme nationalism.

The laws that Cheney admits to breaking are among the ones for which the Tokyo War Crimes Trials sentenced Japanese military and government officials to life imprisonment and death:

Count 1: as "leaders, organizers, instigators, or accomplices in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy .. to wage wars of aggression, and war or wars in violation of international law."
Count 27: waging unprovoked war against China.
Count 54: "ordered, authorized, and permitted" inhumane treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs) and others.
Count 55: "deliberately and recklessly disregarded their duty" to take adequate steps to prevent atrocities.

Will he get a walk?

What kind of a man

2008-12-17T09:51:00.004-05:00

When my son, Brian, was about four, he was extremely inquisitive. As a matter of fact, he still is.

We were in line at a supermarket checkout, and Brian was sitting in the shopping cart basket. A uniformed African-American mailman was in line in front of us.

Brian looked at the man and then turned back toward me. In that loud voice that’s so typical of four year-old boys, he asked, “Hey Dad, what kind of a man is that?”

The mailman looked back at me. We made eye contact.

I hesitated for a moment. In my most liberal, politically correct voice, I responded, “Oh, he’s a regular man.”

The postman watched with amusement.

But Brian insisted. “No Dad, what kind of a man.”

“Oh, he’s just an ordinary man,” I answered.

I was just starting my some-people-have different-colored-skins-but-we’re-all alike-inside speech when Brian interrupted me. “But what kid of a man. Is he a policeman or a fireman?’

“He’s a mailman,” I replied.

The postman smiled wryly and emptied his basket on the counter. He didn’t look back as he paid for his groceries and walked out of the store.

Why literacy matters

2008-12-16T01:32:00.011-05:00

As a member of my local School Board, I was appalled to learn that 40% of the students in our little northern New England school read below grade level. So I looked on line to see how we compared to other schools around the country. It appears that we’re above average in this dismal statistic.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Center reports that nationally 34% of fourth grade students fall below basic reading level and 27% of eighth graders.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading scale has measured the knowledge and skills demonstrated by fourth and eighth grade students since 1992. Their 2007 results show that both grade levels have shown only slight improvement during that period. Fourth graders’ average national score has stagnated between 213 and 221 on a scale of 0-500 where 208 is basic proficiency, 238 is proficient and 268 is advanced. Eighth graders' average national score has ranged from 260 to 264. We’re just treading water with our children’s education.

A 2007 National Endowment for the Arts study found the following discouraging statistics:

Our young people are reading less
Teens and young adults read less often and for shorter amounts of time compared with other age groups and with Americans of previous years. Less than 1/3 of thirteen-year-olds are daily readers — a 14% decline from twenty years earlier. The percentage of non-readers among seventeen-year-olds doubled over a 20-year period — from 9% in 1984 to 19% in 2004.

Our young people are reading less well
Reading scores continue to drop among teenagers and young males.
Reading scores for twelfth-grade readers fell significantly from 1992 to 2005, with the sharpest declines among lower-level readers. Reading scores for male twelfth-graders are 13 points lower than for females, and that gender gap has widened since 1992.

Adult reading scores for almost all education levels have deteriorated
From 1992 to 2003, the percentage of adults with graduate school experience who were rated proficient in reading dropped by 10 points — a 20% decline.

The NEA study also found that American fifteen-year-olds ranked fifteenth in average reading scores for 31 industrialized nations behind Poland, Korea, France, Canada and others.

The decline in reading ability and habit has huge implications for the future of the United States. Young Americans with poor reading skills have lower levels of academic achievement and do less well in the job market. They suffer a lack of employment, lower wages and fewer opportunities for advancement. They weaken our ability to compete in a world economy.

In addition, new technologies are changing what it takes to be literate. Just as 25 years ago, we had no idea about what changes the Internet would bring to society, we don't know what skills will be needed 25 years from now.

But the real danger that this growing semi-literate class of Americans poses is that they can’t fulfill their democratic responsibilities. Being a responsible citizen of a healthy democracy demands reading and problem solving. Twenty-first Century political, technological and social issues require the ability to cope with complexities.

Semi-literate citizens can’t understand the implications of international trade agreements, the need for regulating investment banking or subtle changes to the Constitution.

Semi-literate voters can’t differentiate between lies and truth. They’re susceptible to simplistic explanations and clichés — confused by ambiguity and nuance. They leave our democracy vulnerable to being split into insular, antagonistic factions.

I’ve spent 45 years in marketing and advertising. Political marketers are very skilled at what they do — far more so than most Americans realize.

They know how to create sophisticated political campaigns that use highly manipulated images to “brand” their candidates. They’re experts at substituting reassuring slogans and dramatic personal narratives for real ideas and policy. And they know from years of experience how to gather and use demographic data to precisely target their message. They are master propagandists.

Today’s political campaigns are carefully constructed to eliminate the need for literacy. They’re designed to engender strong feelings of euphoria, empowerment and collective thinking.

They’re based on style and emotion, not content or reality. They’re fine-tuned machines that subliminally alter public mood, emotions and impulses. Their goal is to manipulate the semi-literate into a state of mindless loyalty.

These political campaigns work because an uninformed electorate will blindly cast its ballots for catchy slogans, scripted narratives and contrived sincerity. They depend on public ignorance.

Political leaders in a semi-literate society don’t need to be competent, sincere or honest. They only need to appear so. They merely require a narrative, which may be completely at odds with reality. And they don’t want to dilute that narrative with truth.

The consistency and emotional appeal of the narrative is what counts. The ability to repeat it again and again and to have the media repeat it in endless news cycles turns it into truth.

The foundations of democracy— the ability to think rationally and draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when common sense indicates something is wrong, to separate truth from lies, and to appreciate other points of views— are all based on literacy.

We must insist that our young people be proficient at reading and acquiring knowledge. We must equip them to cope with propaganda. We must help them acquire the inquisitive and critical minds that will serve them in circumstances we can’t predict. We must give them true literacy.

Our recent experience with an Administration that tricked us into unprovoked wars, dismantled key parts of the Constitution and raided the national treasury for the benefit of it’s cronies should be a wake up call. The all-powerful United States of America was taken for a ride by a group of greedy political extremists. The next time we might not wake up until too late.