The Wombat Knows

At Global Community.org, there is a wise wombat who explains that we have only one planet, and we have to take care of it and share (nicely!) with our neighbors. If a wombat can figure it out, why can't more people do so?

Verde Monts

That's my fancy title for this post about my recent trip to Vermont (even the French were onto the "Green Mountains" theme). Last week I spent three days in Vermont's tiny capitol, Montpelier. With a population of just over 8,000, Montpelier has a true "small town" ambience, but at the same time has a lot to offer within a small area. In addition to being the home of the Vermont state government, Montpelier is a center of higher education, with three colleges as well as the New England Culinary Institute.

Montpelier is a compact, picturesque town, with its downtown confined to a few blocks. One can start walking at the west end of State street, where the State House and government buildings are located, and reach the other end of the business district (Main Street) in less than five minutes. The walk takes one past the Capitol Plaza hotel, along with many shops and restaurants. The feel is reminiscent of Portland's Old Port district.

The NECI (which boasts the Food Network's Alton Brown among its alumni) is a treasure for the city, which benefits from its three teaching restaurants (a pastry/sandwich shop, a casual restaurant and a high-end dining establishment). However the true spirit of the city can be found in the Coffee Corner, a fixture on the corner of State and Main for half a century. The Coffee Corner looks for all the world like every eggs-and-coffee greasy spoon that you've ever been in, but there is a notable difference. The Coffee Corner is a place where eggs share the menu with tofu as easily as state legislators share booths with farmers. With a nod to Vermont's liberal and independent spirit, consideration is given to vegetarian and vegan diners, even to the point of having a separate grill in order to avoid cooking vegitarian selections alongside meat products. The Coffee Corner is also a founding member of the Vermont Fresh Network, which "builds innovative partnerships among farmers, chefs and consumers to strengthen Vermont's agriculture."

Montpelier is full of many such delights. Businesses use the tables of the Capitol Grounds (the trendy, liberal coffee shop) to hold informal meetings, and even the liquor store has artistic photographs in the front window. The lawns donwtown are kept immaculate, and the victorian inns are tidy and well kept. I found Montpelier to be a wonderful place to relax and breathe the fresh air. I look forward to my next trip, when I hope to have more time to explore all that the city has to offer.

Speaking of people loving their jobs. . .

Here's a shameless promotion for my friend Becky's web site, Kidz Cakes! The site was just launched a couple of days ago, and it looks great. Good enough to eat, even! So if you're in the Northern Rhode Island/Southeast Massachusetts area and you need a cake for any occasion (like, say, a college graduation this spring), contact Kidz Cakes and they'll set you right up. Take it from me, I've sampled many of Becky's creations (even before she turned pro), and they are always delicious.

Becky is a wonderful person, as is her entire family, and they deserve all the shameless plugs that I can give them. So check out Kidz Cakes, and tell 'em Joe sent you.

All Work and No Play

That's not entirely true, but I feel like the Blogs have been neglected lately. I checked in on the Sea Blog earlier and a tumbleweed went bouncing across the screen. The reason for this dearth of material is my new job (which, by the way, I absolutley love!) You see, I used to do a lot of my blogging during my lunch hour (or occasionally beyond) because, frankly, I didn't care if they thought that I was violating their Internet-use policy. (Which, to be honest, I did with regularity. They got me back by stiffing me out of some vacation. Bastards!) I took that job out of necessity, and they never gave me a reason to consider it anything other than a short-term arrangement, so everybody was out for themselves.

That wasn't a real healthy relationship, but the happy result of all of that is that I've done quite a bit of writing in my blogs over the last few months. Things are going to change a little bit with my new job. Not that they won't let me use my PC during lunch hours (I'm pretty sure they will), but things just feel different at the new place. Everybody seems to be about accomplishing our mission, and I am happy and motivated at a job like I've never been before. I'm not sure that I'll need the mid-day diversion that writing provided me at the other place.

Not to say that I won't be writing. I have more "free" time at home now, and I'll be spending some time on the road, so there will definitely be opportunities for me to blog (and work on longer pieces) during the evenings. The critical thing now is to establish new habits to make writing at home a greater part of the routine. This week has been a transition week, letting go of the old job and embracing the new one. Next week is another transition - getting acclimated to the Vermont portion of the job. If my portable has come in by then, I'll be able to do some writing from the road. Otherwise, it's probably another week or so of neglect before I get back into the swing of things. If I'm lucky, I'll have the time to do a couple more wrap-up entries at the Sea Blog before that material gets too stale. Then it's full force here and at the Land Blog.

It's a new era in Joe's Blog Land, and I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully you'll stick with me through the transition period.

Cross-post: Joe's Land Blog

Just making sure traffic gets steered to the Land Blog. My latest post there relates to the continued failure to put the environment and endangered species on a level footing with profitability. This is also an excuse to get my "related links posted" without fiddling around too much with the Land Blog template at this point.

What Do Conservatives Want?

Laurie Meunier Graves, editor of the Wolf Moon Press, wrote a thoughtful piece in the wake of Hurricane Katrina called, "What Do Conservatives Want?" The essay echoes many of my own thoughts about the impact of the tax cuts and contempt that conservatives have for social programs:

"What do conservatives want? Do they really want a country that ranks “43rd in the world in infant mortality”? Do they really want a country where people’s teeth go black and fall out because they can’t afford to go to a dentist? Do they really want a country that thinks nothing of abandoning poor people when a natural disaster strikes? Perhaps I’m being naïve, but I can’t believe that most conservatives want this."

This is my issue with the conservatives as well. Sure, tax cuts seem good, but think of the impact on people for a moment. The US is the wealthiest country on the planet, no? We should be proud to live in a country where poverty has basically been eradicated. Yet, it isn't so, and many (conservatives) believe that the poor have only their own damn selves to blame. It boggles the mind that many of us (conservatives) believe that it is OK to enact policy that allows so much of this country's wealth to be hoarded among so few, while others go without basic healthcare coverage.

Graves' article focuses largely on healthcare issues, and they are central to the problem. We live in a country where people openly mock Canada's National Health Care policies. Yet ever more of our citizens cross the border to get their prescriptions filled in Canada, where the drugs are affordable. If Canada's system is so innately terrible, why can they afford prescriptions while US citizens can't? I also have family in Arizona, and they've been known to drive three hours to cross into Mexico for dental work, because Medicare won't cover it and the cost from the US dentists is so prohibitive.

Think about that for a moment. My impression is that about 95% of the population of this country thinks of Mexico as a third-world country. Yet a US Citizen can go there and get good treatment for a lot less than they can get in this country. It's shameful.

But it doesn't stop with healthcare. We develop all kinds of new housing projects that are aimed toward wealthy or upper-middle-class residents, because the developers can turn a tidy profit. Yet low-income housing is so difficult to come by that too many of our citizens live in substandard housing, or on the streets. We don't support victims of domestic abuse with adequate services. Women are often forced to choose between living with an abusive partner or living without a roof. There are many, many other examples.

I can hear the counterarguments already. "You're never going to be able to eliminate poverty;" "if you give people handouts, they will sit around and just take the handouts." And both are true. I don't believe that we can eradicate 100% of the poverty in this country. And there will always be people who take advantage of ("cheat") the welfare systems. But the fact that there are going to be some exceptions, in my opinion, is no justification to enact policies to deny help to those (many more people) who can be helped, but don't wish to make a career of it. Conservative policy in this country has become mean policy, though (to paraphrase Graves again), I don't believe that most conservatives are mean people.

So, what do the conservatives want? And better yet, why do they want it? The vast majority of those who voted the "conservative" line in the last election will never in their lives be in a position (i.e. be wealthy enough) to actually benefit from the policies favored by the current administration. We need to educate the masses about the impact of these decisions, and fast. The changes that this society needs to make can either be implemented peacefully, by electing politicians who are in favor of social programs (you cynics may issue your challenges here). Otherwise, it can be a less pleasant process, marked by confrontation and social unrest. I am in favor of the former, and I hope that this country can begin again to move in the right direction, starting with the 2006 elections.

More on Writing

On Saturday, while the rest of you were out enjoying a beautiful autumn day (those of you in Maine, anyway), I was taking a class in the Joel and Linda Abramson Center at the University of Southern Maine. The topic: How to Freelance.

The course was taught be Sherry B. Hansen, a Brunswick resident who has had hundreds of articles, poems, and short stories published over the last 17 years. Like me, she did not grow up, or even graduate from college, thinking that she would be a writer. However, when she was in her early 40's, she gave up the workaday life for that of a freelancer. And what a life it is! Hard work, uncertainty, and quite a bit of rejection. When an article does get published, it probably won't pay a heck of a lot. Still, there are resources and skills that one can develop to help maximize ones chances of getting your work published.

The class of 11 was a varied lot. Participants ranged in age from mid-20's to about 60, with most of us hovering within a few years of our 40th birthday by my estimation. There were a few stay-at-home parents, a nurse or two, an "odd job" guy, and a couple of people who have jobs, but not what they would call careers. By my count, there was just one accountant in the mix. People's areas of interest were equally varied. One guy wanted to write CD reviews and band interviews. One woman wanted to write "life experience" stories. One woman has written a lot of health-related articles for in-house news letters, and was thinking that she ought to start getting paid for her troubles. Another woman wanted to write essays about her experience as a cancer survivor. One guy wants to be the next Dave Barry. One guy writes about baseball and the environment. Some folks have been published previously, others of us have not.

There was a lot of practical advice to be gained from this class. One of the biggest items for me was the most basic - how do you contact publications that you might be interested in writing for? Following that up - how much do they pay, when do they pay you, how are rights handled. And the biggie to end the day - how to write query letters. There was more than enough information for one to get started, which is really what I was hoping for from this session. The other valuable lesson from Ms. Hansen, though not one on the agenda, is to not expect to get rich, but at the same time not to get discouraged. If a publication rejects your article, move on to the next publication. With enough hard work (and enough talent, I suppose), you will get that first clip, and you're on your way. Sherry had a lot of war stories to tell from the last 17 years, all entertaining and informative.

Next up is figuring out what to write. I did send out my first query, a book review for When Towns Had Teams. I'm going to wait to find out if it's been accepted before I publish it on Joe's Sea Blog. I pitched it to the Times Record, but I have a couple of fallback publications to look into as well. After that, who knows? The Abramson center features water free urinals. These babies save, on average, 40,000 gallons of water per year, per urinal. The topic is a natural for the Land Blog, but I have to start thinking, is there anybody out there who would pay me for an article on the subject?

Stay tuned. . . .